In Frisch’s ‘Three dimensions and more’ he discusses the idea of the deep dark secret of oral history being like the unopened shoe box of homemade videos – unwatched. After digesting this idea for the last two years I suddenly realised something. Oral history as a field exists because of technological advancements. The field is completely intertwine with technology: the recording devices used to make the first recordings, the internet now allowing for international zoom interviews, it all depends on technology. This made me think that maybe the deep dark secret is not an oral history problem but in fact a technology problem. It’s not oral history’s fault that much of technology is not particularly focused on sustainable storage. There is focus on speedy communication; phones, text messages, social media and trading; online shopping and targeted advertising. Even accessing knowledge (aka googling) is not based on accuracy but more speed and attention.
Digital storage is a minefield from ‘things that exist on the internet forever’ to link rot and from the now unreadable mini-disc to hard drives that can store two terabytes of data. It is so extreme that it is clear that no has really thought about beyond uploading it. Technology, like many things in capitalist society live solely in the present, so the way it views time extremely 2-dimensional. There is no thought about how this attitude towards storage affects the past or the future. The amount of time and money that is required to keep archives up to date with their digitisation is not covered by the amount of money and time archives actually have. Beyond the archive our day to day interaction and documentation has an unknown future. What are your next of kin going to do with your Facebook page when you die? Or your instagram? Your Snapchat? Your emails? Your iCloud? Your laptop, smart phone, hard drivers and tablets? Currently it is likely that it will either disappear or be inaccessible.
The way we store our data in this blasé way has the potential to create a black hole of information in the timeline of human history. This attitude is completely inefficient when it comes to accessing and reusing. Unless of course you are Facebook, Google or Apple. These mega gods of information are able to mine astronomical amounts of data and use it. But in order to use it they strip every single bit of humanity from the process. The only way to use the truly insane amounts of data is by reducing the human producer so much that literally become zeros and ones. No feelings, no aura, just nothing. Oral history cannot do this because oral history is fundamentally human. Just like home videos that are filled with nostalgia and memory, they take time to watch or listen to because there is so much emotion and memory that needs to be digested while viewing. But the data that is used by big tech is void of this emotion.
In conclusion, due to oral history’s long term yet slightly abusive relationship with technology it has got this deep dark secret of unused archives. But in truth technology does not support what archives are trying to do. The creators of this technology just do not give a shit because that’s the nature of the capitalistic beast. I suggest therefore that we take a reverse attitude towards this relationship. Oral history needs to inform tech what they need in order to make archives work better because clearly tech has no idea what it is doing.