of the written word in a library context). With any luck, this latest information
age will come to its senses and draw more effective distinctions between cultural
content and commodity.
Viewed from another perspective, there seems to be a very real concern that
digital media will circumvent the filters that keep the accumulation of the past
under control. We now face not only an increasing proliferation of multi-media
texts, but we have the means to digitize, compress, and store them. And not
only is the cost of storage dropping, but the efficiency of digital finding aids is
rapidly increasing. Here too we see a change in the artifactual status of
audiovisual products: rather than anomalous objects findable by title or date, we
have information sets searchable by increasingly flexible, and indeed intelligent,
search engines. The balance between information and artifact, for so long
maintained in the collections of archives, seems to be shifting. The larger
cultural consequences are enormous as well. The filtration that for so long
served to maintain cultural coherence (the canon of endorsed literature or film
or music), whether as constructed by cultural elites or by industrial producers,
has also given way. DVDs, computer games, and online media distribution have
not only eroded the markets of 'older' centralized media, but have given users
much greater control over their own cultural programming. Extended to the
world of the archive, many scenarios for the digital future envision far greater
access for 'ordinary' people, again, circumventing the traditional filters and
paralleling the developments of the culture generally.
Finally, consider the once clear distinction between archivist and client.
Consistent with the distributed nature of especially networked digital media, the
means of production have been dispersed, effectively blurring the distinctions
between producer and consumer. The widespread means to distribute what has
been produced is perhaps even more important, since earlier amateur media
formats enabled grassroots production, but had little ability to bring texts to
audiences. Combined, these attributes help to explain the extraordinarily
interesting developments within peer-to-peer communities, where collaborative
efforts have superceded the wildest fantasies of industrial cultural producers.
The Napster story, in which millions of 'users' also digitized, stored, and made
small collections available, produced a composite that went far beyond the
technical and financial capacities of any one music company. Kuro5hin and
Slashdot do the same for a form of journalism in which the readers are also the
providers of material and redaction. And the open source software movement,
in which many thousands of programmers volunteer their efforts to produce
programs more robust and responsive than heavily encrypted industrial
counterparts, again underscores the potentials of distributed production.
Consistent with this, collaborative data gathering is one of the most exciting
possibilities facing the archive, and it speaks directly to the new cultural logics
that extend from the availability of new technologies. These collaborative
developments, in which hierarchies of producer/receiver or archivist/client are
overthrown, enable exciting new potentials. But they also raise fundamental
questions about the ownership of culture. Progressive elements of the legal
community have been standing up to the steady encroachment of copyright
terms and the creative deployment of trademark statutes with such notions as
the creative commons, notions that are essential if the logic of distribution is
to supercede that of concentration.
The articles in this collection emerge from a fast-changing environment and set
of institutional practices. Rooted in an increasingly convergent media world,
where technologies, texts, and audiences move easily among once distinct media
forms, digital media seem designed to embrace certain aspects of our quotidian
experience. On the other hand, by exploding the traditional canon of established
works and opening up a vast range of textual experiences, by enabling flexible
search strategies, and by offering the means for creative intervention, digital
media are transforming both the notion of scholarship and even something as
basic as literacy. What makes this striking is the fact that we are witnessing the
very beginning of these technologies: the Internet is not yet 10 years old! As the
Semantic Web nears its launch, as the development of new compression
algorithms and storage media continues, it is increasingly evident that the kinds
of pressures and possibilities that we have witnessed with regard to the archive
will continue to grow in intensity.
Like the introduction of the printed word, this latest round of digital technolo
gies is proving to be something of a Trojan horse. Not only does it afford media
with distinctive attributes, but it brings with it new logics, it enables us to put
new questions to long established traditions, and it seems destined to transform
institutional practice in ways that are only now beginning to appear. As a hard-
boiled academic, I'm tempted to counter this fast-changing scenario by shifting
the discussion up a level or two in abstraction, and taking refuge into the
concept of the archive as voiced by the likes of Michel Foucault. But as a regular
user of archives, and as a historian of new media (even those that are now 'old'),
I'm delighted to delve into the kinds of insights gathered in these pages, insights
that chart a moment of change, that trace the fissures in long established 'best
practices' and that offer new ways to conceptualize - and problematize - the
situation that confronts us.
William Uricchio
PREFACE
