Fingers crossed for the digital archive

The times we’re living in seem like an Age of Exposure—exposure of, exposure to. But if our digital lives were to disappear, so little record might survive of this moment in time as to make it seem, to anyone looking back, like a new Dark Age.

The traces of our times, of us—our images, our words—we blithely consign to safekeeping in strings of 0s and 1s. Yet digital data is vulnerable. Whatever the hardware or software or the imagined sanctity of the ‘cloud’, its eventual failure is all but guaranteed. The same was doubtless said of our former reliance on flimsy, flammable paper. Still is said: there was an outcry earlier this year when, as a cost-cutting measure, it was decided that archival copies of Acts of the British parliament—starting with the Brexit legislation—would be printed on paper rather than the traditional vellum.¹