Composting the Archives The Case for Digital Decay Ryan Shaw UC Berkeley School of Information Decasia Panel, 4S Annual Meeting November 2, 2006

“ The truth is that computation has, from the very start, been built to rot .” “ Delete Our Cultural Heritage?” Telegraph.co.uk , 12/07/2004 Bruce Sterling

Physical storage media Operating systems Applications References between documents Classification systems Declining usage Norms and economics of use Forms of Digital Decay Computer hardware

The Case Against Decay Stabilization , preservation and conservation are the traditional goals of the archivist Such goals imply a constant battle against decay But the deluge of digital information available for archiving is making this battle unwinnable

Stabilization , preservation and conservation are the traditional goals of the archivist

Such goals imply a constant battle against decay

But the deluge of digital information available for archiving is making this battle unwinnable

The Case For Decay Decay as a strategy for forgetting Decay as a dynamic process Decay as a generator of new creative energy

Decay as a strategy for forgetting

Decay as a dynamic process

Decay as a generator of new creative energy

“ To tell someone their record is gone is essentially to lie to them. In an electronic age, people should understand that once they have been convicted or arrested that will never go away .” “ Expunged Criminal Records Live to Tell Tales,” New York Times , 10/17/2006 Lawyer Lida Rodriguez-Taseff

“ What can be more inconsiderate or unjust than to compare a few existing Writers with the whole succession of their Progenitors?” William Wordsworth “ Reply to 'Mathetes',” The Prose Works of William Wordsworth , 1974

Seligmann & Bugaj, “Live Web stationery: virtual paper aging,” 1997

Tsukada, Takabayashi, & Matsui, “Dying Link,” 2003

“ ...we must aspire to turn media into dust —to make it as abundant and ephemeral as newspaper clippings...” “ Let us grind them into dust! The new aesthetics of digital archives,” 2005 Matt Locke

Toward New Forms of Decay Reversed decay Spatial decay Collaborative decay

Reversed decay

Spatial decay

Collaborative decay