Do Archives Face an Existential Threat in the Digital Age?

The rapid growth of information and communication technology can certainly bring challenges to archives and any theory/practice that is related to it. Internet-based services are capable of replicating all the functions of the archival institutions, as studied by Ivan Szekely. Most of the documents are available online in today’s world which makes them more user-friendly…

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In-Text Index—09/11/2023

I find the way Angela Haas explains organization interesting, especially in relation to the relationships between database and narrative that Folsom and Hayles discuss. Haas clarifies her usage of subheadings, stating “Despite the use of subheading to facilitate spatially organized logics, it is important to read productive intellectual and practical overlaps across and between the…

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For the plot

Cued up from Hayles (2007) and Folsom (2007) I find the ponderance of databases as carefully plotted but also as wildly human, as collateral to whims and unbidden fantasy, and somehow distillable down to a character, an avatar made of code and thought and poorly translatable emotion. Can databases be alive, not because of their…

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Finding Form in Digital Wilderness: A Decolonial, Douen’s Pursuit?

Folsom reminds us of the inherent excess haunting both database and narrative: each requires a perpetual eclipsing of an out-thereness; a map of infinite possibilities that can only be illuminated one at a time, emerging from thresholds like phantoms. If databases provide bits and pieces rendered visible by a series of choices; narratives are the…

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