When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future

In the current age of information inflation in technologically developed countries and the ever-increasing reliance on digital technologies to store this information, historian Rumsey considers the implications of storing our collective memory and personal archives in a frail medium that requires energy to maintain. Rumsey sees our digital era as "merely the most current installment in the unfolding saga of our desire to know more about the world and ourselves." She traces this saga to four historical moments: the development of writing in Mesopotamia; the Greeks' development of libraries; the Renaissance recovery of ancient writings and development of movable type; and the Enlightenment's linkage between knowledge and progress. Each contributed to a materialistic approach to the world and an "unquenchable appetite for information." Rumsey also draws on contemporary science in the biology of memory, considering how we might cope with the growing abundance of information, specifically in the acts of forgetting and assigning value, and the influence of collective and personal memory on how we respond to future situations. In this context, Rumsey underscores the need to "[retool] literacy in the digital age and [update] public policies to ensure investment in long-term institutions capable of securing memory into the future... when we are no more." For anyone skeptical about the increasing reliance on digital media, Rumsey eases concern by revisiting information inflations of the past, simultaneously conveying the importance of the issue to a more general readership. Agent: John Taylor Williams, Kneerim, Williams & Bloom. (Mar.)