Whenever I mention my ideas for analogue archiving solutions to anyone the reaction I get is a blank stare shifty follow by a change in subject. When I was venting about this recurring experience to my mother, she did not seem surprised; “what do you except people see the digital as the future?” She is correct this is what people believe but the ‘future’ is a rather nebulous concept and it is important to manage expectations – how far is the ‘future’? If you take what is written in The shock of the old: technology and global history since 1900 then you will quickly understand how far off we are from the future and how slow technology actually moves. The writer approaches the history of technology not through the lens of innovation but from use – a use-based history of technology. This quickly reveals the pace at which humanity really adopts technology through examples like horses being more important in Nazi Germany’s advances than the V2 and the fact that we have never used as much coal as now. We are slow at technology, which is fine but we need to be aware of it. The digital divide is a real thing and it needs to be considered. Note that the digital divide is not across generational lines, yes older people cannot use TikTok, but I have seen children struggle to use a keyboard and a mouse because they are so used to touch screens. The digital divide also means that there is an exclusive group of people who do know how to use this tech and they are in high demand, to the extend that there is little incentive for workers to lend their services to the GLAM sector. Why would you work for less money in a library when you can earn a hundred times more somewhere else. Heritage sites and the wider GLAM sector can in many instance not afford to develop their own technologies mostly because they are unable to maintain them. But they also sometimes struggle to update their bought in systems because moving all their data on their collection round is too much work and effort. And in some cases the software producers are aware of this and shut down the feedback loop because they know their customers can’t leave them. To summaries saying “digital is the future” is an unproductive lie that we tell ourselves to make us feel better and trendy.
Here comes my suggestion otherwise we would be left hanging in a rather sad place. The National Trust is undoubtedly a large organisation and they already run several digital platforms which they have their own maintenance team for. What I suggest is that if people want to create cool snazzy digital interfaces they have to do this at Trust, because the Trust already have the infrastructure in place (to certain extent) to cope with the difficulties of running a digital system. E.G. https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio On individual site level however digital platforms cannot be made or maintain and the only option in my eyes is to either to keep it analogue (better for the environment) or DIY digital. By DIY digital I mean word docs and spreadsheets and softwares that are a little more accessible to a wider group of people. These option are more accessible and more maintainable but they are less sexy. When it comes to working with digital you have to know your limits and the people around you and the people who will come after you. It is not exciting but it might just solve your problem.