“[Historical archiving organizations] are ‘not dispassionate and impartial venues, but rather institutions that carry out, however subtly, ideological, cultural, and politically informed agendas’” (Cox 12).
In the above quote, Cox discusses archival institutions as shapers, not mere handlers, of history through their respective agendas. The archivists and collectors of these institutions hold within their use and preservation (or lack thereof) of documents the power to create an accurate or fictitious narrative with the collections and to determine what’s worth keeping. When considering the personal, digital archive, then, we should likewise contemplate the power being held and how it can be used.
While Cox notes the risk of digital archives in their vulnerable delete-ability (6), if handled carefully, they can also prove essentially immortal as long as the world continues forth in its increasingly technological way. This leaves those in charge of the personal archive to create a possibly immortal personal history, which would far exceed the life of paper documents. If we consider this in terms of social media, for example, we can see the author of each of his/her posts as the archivist with archival power to determine his/her historical narrative. One can choose to write a fictitious memoir on Facebook, of which they will be reminded each day on their Time Hop. In this maneuver, through what Thompson describes as, “The real power of digital memories [to] trigger our human ones” (39) archivists can use their documenting power to pen a fictitious memoir on Facebook, then in reviewing it a year later via Time Hop, can refresh the falsified memory and affirm through his/her personal digital archive a false historical narrative.
It is in this falsification capability of digital archives that the storage of memories (both personal and cultural) becomes endangered. A similar example can be found in Thompson’s “We, the Memorious.” Thompson accounts how he sat with Gordon Bell and listened to the story of Bell attending a jazz concert in Australia. In his notes, he penned that Bell had seen the show with his daughter. The next day, however, Bell pulled up the audio clip of the conversation, wherein he tells Thompson that he attended the concert with his wife. To this, Thompson writes, “Bell’s artificial memory was correcting my memory” (30). But, was it correcting it, or changing the reality of the conversation? Since the discrepancy was in a story told by Bell, the presenter of the audio clip, couldn’t he have easily returned home, done some savvy work with audio software (being the techy genius that he is) and replaced “daughter” with “wife”? While likely not what happened, the great possibility of a falsified narrative to have replaced the real one, and be accepted by Thompson as a correction to his own memory demonstrates the falsifying capabilities of digitized archives.
Another branch to the falsification issue in digitized archives are the holders of archival power beyond the collectors of personal digitized archives, such as those who run the sites where social media histories are published. There is a power that digital publications possess that is equivalent to print materials where it should not be. While it is clear to note, as Cox has, the different in viewing edits and changes in a printed text vs. a digital one—namely, that those in print can be easily noted, while those in digital form are often invisible—the average person regards a published item on social media as being in it’s original form, though they don’t possess the technological skills to know if it’s been altered. For example, a posting on Facebook from five years ago shows up in your Time Hop. Though you have no recollection of the memory, or had remembered it differently than how you inscribed it on your Facebook wall, you most likely assume that the post is in its original form and that it (unless you make a habit of writing fictitious memoirs) is true to the memory it refers. Not many would challenge the published digital archive in favor of their memory (unless they have hyperthymesia). After all, it fails you on a daily basis and the evidence of your posted memory is staring you in the face. On the other end of that post, however, could easily be a computer genius at Facebook who thought he/she would have some fun manipulating posts from years ago, and successfully manipulates your published account. That hacker would have successfully, in most cases, therein falsified the actual memory in your mind and thus the narrative of your personal history.
While all of these examples are on the very small scale of falsified possibilities in digital archives, and the concerns of the delete-ability of digital archives by Cox, as well as the unreliable record of the brain’s memory that Thompson discusses are valid, there is a vast consideration of the falsification of digital archives to be considered as we slip further into a completely technological age where digitized records are highly favored over those of the body and print.
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