John Updike's Disks
This Chronicle article examines the challenges faced in all of our human archives - what to do with all of the digital records of our existence. We're struggling with this on the ACERA committee on the federal record level but it impacts us down to teach individual. I kept a journal that was actually too detailed through my late teenage years but the record of my life for more than the last decade are the emails I've sent to my friend I met via H-Net online that have been authored in more than one email program. I've purposely stayed away from Outlook and Outlook Express because of the viruses. But I'm not sure anyone will ever be able to open my Pegasus Mail (if there is any one out there that would ever want to, that is . . . ) The article explores the work taking place at the University of Maryland's Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Furthermore, the author asserts how important for us to know how a particular individual did their writing since it's often no longer comparing and contrasting the rough drafts. With modern writers, how many ideas are on their first generation Blackberry we would already have trouble accessing? We keep records in so many different places, how will we reconcile and understand these multiple inputs? On another front, I'm enjoying a crisp spring day before it rains on the Easter Bunny.
