Abby Smith Rumsey on Remembering, Forgetting, and When We Are No More

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2016

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

You might think your tweets on Twitter belong to you. But in 2010, the Library of Congress acquired the entire archive of Twitter. Why would such a majestic library acquire such seemingly ephemeral material? Historian Abby Smith Rumsey, author of When We Are No More, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about this decision of the Library of Congress and the general challenge of how to cope with a world when so much of what we write and read is digital. Subjects discussed include what we can learn from the past, the power of collective memory, what is worth saving, and how we might archive our electronic lives so that we and those who come after us can find what we might be looking for.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:09.2	I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:13.7	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find
0:18.7	links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.7	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done
0:25.8	going back to 2006.
0:28.2	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:30.7	We'd love to hear from you.
0:34.4	Today is May 31, 2016, and my guest is writer and historian, Abby Smith-Rumsey.
0:41.4	She is the author of, When We Are No More, How Digital Memory Will Shape Our Future.
0:47.0	She's published in March 2016, and it is a fascinating look at memory, history, identity,
0:53.7	and the digital information age.
0:55.8	And she manages to discuss all this in a mere 177 pages.
1:01.3	It's a great book.
1:02.3	Abby, welcome to Econ Talk.
1:03.7	Thank you very much.
1:04.7	I'm glad to be here.
1:05.7	So you've done a lot of practical work on the question of how to preserve digital content
1:09.7	with the Library of Congress, the National Science Foundation Task Force.
1:13.8	But you open your book with a very non-digital piece of America's heritage, which is the
1:18.5	Declaration of Independence.
1:21.2	What did you learn from how people react to seeing that artifact?
	...

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