This is Hell.

It's still 2021 and it's still Peruser Alex playing listener favorites from the past year.

And today, an April conversation with Craig Robertson on The filing cabinet a vertical history of

information. Thanks to David G and Braden S for the suggestion. Chuck is back on

Monday when he's talking with historian Peter James Hudson on his Boston Review

Article Frederick Douglas and the American Empire in Haiti.

Stay safe. See you soon.

Bye.

This is hell.

The filing cabinet for over a century stood for the power of information and knowledge.

Its categorizations and classifications rendered information accessible to burgeoning

late 19th century capitalism.

Now in the 21st century, the filing cabinet's legacy can be seen through the ways in which

we store and retrieve information for better or worse.

Here to help us better understand the cutting edge late 19th century technology that is the

filing cabinet and its impact that we feel today still feel today. Media Studies scholar Craig

Robertson is author of the filing cabinet a vertical history of information.

Welcome to this is Hell Craig.

Thanks Chuck, it's great to be here.

You know, one of the things I kept thinking about when just like the very beginning of your book

when you're talking about the, just the presence of a filing cabinet in an office is we don't think of that in the same way that we think of a computer.

We think of the computer as a completely revolutionary machine that utterly changed society.

...