After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory - Softcover

Owens, Trevor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472056670 ISBN 13: 9780472056675

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2024

Synopsis

The digital age is burning out our most precious resources and the future of the past is at stake. In After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory, Trevor Owens warns that our institutions of cultural memory—libraries, archives, museums, humanities departments, research institutes, and more—have been “disrupted,” and largely not for the better. He calls for memory workers and memory institutions to take back control of envisioning the future of memory from management consultants and tech sector evangelists.

After Disruption posits that we are no longer planning for a digital future, but instead living in a digital present. In this context, Owens asks how we plan for and develop a more just, sustainable, and healthy future for cultural memory. The first half of the book draws on critical scholarship on the history of technology and business to document and expose the sources of tech startup ideologies and their pernicious results, revealing that we need powerful and compelling counter frameworks and values to replace these ideologies. The second half of the book makes the case for the centrality of maintenance, care, and repair as interrelated frameworks to build a better future in which libraries, archives, and museums can thrive as sites of belonging and connection through collections.

About this title

About the Author

Trevor Owens is a Public Historian in Residence at American University, a Lecturer for the University of Maryland’s College of Information, and the Director of Digital Services at The Library of Congress.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472056670
• ISBN 13: 9780472056675
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224