In the book Matched, by Allie Condie, only 100 stories, songs, and poems were preserved by the totalitarian government. Naturally, the heroine discovers a poem that the government had deemed too revolutionary to be preserved, and she is inspired by it to fight back (Condie). This book was one of many of the dystopian young adult books that were popular during my childhood, but the idea that a government would intentionally preserve some art, and destroy others, was a concept that remained with me long after I forgot the love triangle that was at the center of the book series. The difficultly of intentional preservation is that no one is without bias, leading to an abundance of proof for one side of history, and a scarcity of all else.
I ran into the problems of preservation when writing my thesis on Catholic women in the time of Elizabeth I. The records of women were often not nonexistent because of the patriarchal society, and the records of Catholics were often intentionally destroyed by the Catholics themselves, seeking to avoid persecution. This was, in some ways, a blessing; I had the opportunity to look at just about every record that has been preserved. As Roy Rosenzweig writes, “the injunction of traditional historians to look at “everything” cannot survive in a digital era in which “everything” has survived” (Rosenzweig). An important part of being a historian was working in that empty space where not everything has survived. Scarcity does not frighten me; although I wished many times in my research for more documents, I was able to focus on what did exist, and use it to make my own arguments. And this scarcity had a purpose. If every document I wished for had survived, many more people might have been murdered for their religious beliefs. The control of the preservation was in individual’s hands, and they made the choice to destroy things to protect themselves and their families.
The abundance of the internet frightens me far more, because the people who decide what to preserve often do not have the best interests of the people whose data they are preserving at heart. Some governments have considered laws on “the right to be forgotten,” which awaken a host of worries about censorship and privacy (Fleischer). Opening people’s mail without their knowledge is a federal offense; but activists worry constantly that their text messages or other internet communication will be used against them in court.
Of course, the potential scarcity of the internet worries me as well. I remember in 2017, when the Trump administration began deleting news articles about Climate Change. Rosenzweig’s comment “Future historians may be unable to ascertain not only whether Bert is evil, but also which undersecretaries of defense were evil” reminded me of this (Rosenzweig). The destruction of research for a political agenda is frightening, and the destruction on the internet carries with it an element of gaslighting. Burning a book leaves ash and a space on the shelf; editing an internet page may leave no record at all, outside of people’s memories.
My issue with the abundance of the internet is that control is taken out of the creator’s hands, and given to conglomerates who want to gather and sell data to the highest bidder. Therefore, I believe that the Archive projects we examined in class are a better way of remembering the past. They are by nature “opt-in,” as people have to send in photos and memories themselves. The curators of these projects have a responsibility to be considerate in examining what posts to save, if space is a concern. As for long-term preservation of these materials, I do not have an answer. Relying on government bodies, like the Library of Congress, as the September 11 Digital Archive does, comes with concerns about the government’s goals (Home · September 11 Digital Archive). Although the loss of data is a huge concern, humanity has survived the burning of the Library of Alexandra. I am more concerned that we will not survive the complete loss of anonymity and personal control that the internet threatens.
Works Cited
Condie, Ally. Matched. Penguin, 2010.
Fleischer, Peter. “Foggy Thinking about the Right to Oblivion.” Peter Fleischer: Privacy…?, 9 Mar. 2011, http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2011/03/foggy-thinking-about-right-to-oblivion.html.
Home · September 11 Digital Archive. https://911digitalarchive.org/. Accessed 3 Apr. 2021.
Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.” American Historical Review, vol. 108, no. 3, June 2003, pp. 735–62.