There are a number of issues related to “current” digital formats because technology changes so rapidly. When technology is advancing so rapidly and “entire generations of data carriers are made obsolete by hardware developments” (90), how will future generations access these types of digital media? I think this is part of why Ernst believes that the Internet is not, in fact, an archive. “The archive is defined as a given, preselected quantity of documents evaluated according to their worth for being handed down,” he says. “The Internet, on the other hand, is an aggregate of unpredictable texts, sounds, images, data, and programs” (86). If our society is shifting toward a primarily digital interface for communication, however, this raises a lot of questions about the status of “archives” in our society what will happen to the “traditional” archive in the future. It indicates that a number of changes will be necessary in archival procedures/standards in the future if archives are to successfully adapt and evolve significantly in order to remain relevant in the future.

Ernst noted that “it is not the data here, however, but their metadata that are the archival elements” (89). The random assortment of material on the Internet is not organized in any way to construe meaning. It is simply collecting items, but “cyberspace has no meaning” (138). The metadata is required to introduce meaning and context for the assortment of materials on the web. Through the metadata, one can learn far more about the multimedia, why it was shared, who shared it, why it was important to them or why they felt it may be important to others. The metadata proves crucial to defining and “cataloging” the Internet’s contents. I personally am finding writing succinct and informative metadata for digital objects a challenge, in trying to find the best way to both describe the digital item and also explain its digital provenance. In describing the provenance of digital items I’ve been archiving I have certainly found myself contributing to hyperlinkability. While collecting images from the web, in describing them I try to link back to the original source page or to other descriptive media, thus contributing to the “interconnectivity of different media” (119) on my own inconsequential blog. I can see now that in doing this, the emphasis on this digital archiving has indeed shifted to regeneration and I am “(co)producing” by using these materials for my own needs (95). Do my references and descriptions now make this collection of random multimedia “self-operant and self-aware” and does this Tumblr page now constitute “a self-referent archive” (84)?

Ernst argues “the so-called cyberspace is not primarily about memory as a cultural record but rather about a performative form of memory as communication” (99). On sites like Facebook users are not recording memory on their pages for the sake of recording memory. They do so in order to share and communicate their memory and experience to others. Your Facebook friends were not on that vacation with you, but you attempt to document and thus communicate your own memories through your photos, posts, etc. These repositories of one’s personal life experiences are not “final destinations” for memory storage like traditional archives, but are “frequently accessed sites” (99) of communicated memory. If “memory is literally permanently in transition” (97) and constantly being constructed in our digital world, what can accurately be identified as “memory,” and what does this mean for collective memory and the historical cultural record as well? Maybe Ernst is right and the internet “will turn memory itself into an ephemeral, passing drama” (117).

We consider our personal computers, or at least I know I do, as safe and permanent storage for documents, photographs, etc. A lot of Ernst’s arguments made me entirely reevaluate that view, and wonder about the inherent impermanence of digitized items I consider important and worth saving. Ernst says that “your own private computer as a mere temporary holding tank for data, not as a permanent file cabinet” (120). If “cyberspace has no memory” (138) and your personal computer is a “mere temporary holding tank” and a media machine that will soon be obsolete, what would be an actual safe and “permanent file cabinet” or “memory spaces geared to eternity” (86) for these digital materials? Do we need to in fact, archive the protocols and algorithms that make our digital memory creation possible in order for future generations to access these? I wished Ernst would discuss and explore the specific protocols and formats he frequently mentioned in more detail in these chapters, and he did not really explore the fact that these formats and protocols are themselves the products of social, political, and economic factors that speak about our current culture. I was hung up on Doron Swade’s observation that “the operational continuity of contemporary culture cannot be assured” (93) any longer, and wondered what others’ thoughts were about this in relation to constantly changing technologies, protocols, and formats.