We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World

Murphy, Brian Michael

ISBN 10: 1469668289 / ISBN 13: 9781469668284

Published by The University of North Carolina, 2022

About this Item

HARDCOVER Good - Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name - GOOD Standard-sized.

Seller Inventory # M1469668289Z3

Bibliographic Details

• Title: We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1469668289
• ISBN 13: 9781469668284
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Locked away in refrigerated vaults, sanitized by gas chambers, and secured within bombproof caverns deep under mountains are America’s most prized materials: the ever-expanding collection of records that now accompany each of us from birth to death. This data complex backs up and protects our most vital information against decay and destruction, and yet it binds us to corporate and government institutions whose power is also preserved in its bunkers, infrastructures, and sterilized spaces.

We the Dead traces the emergence of the data complex in the early twentieth century and guides readers through its expansion in a series of moments when Americans thought they were living just before the end of the world. Depression-era eugenicists feared racial contamination and the downfall of the white American family, while contemporary technologists seek ever denser and more durable materials for storing data, from microetched metal discs to cryptocurrency keys encoded in synthetic DNA. Artfully written and packed with provocative ideas, this haunting book illuminates the dark places of the data complex and the ways it increasingly blurs the lines between human and machine, biological body and data body, life and digital afterlife.

About the Author

Brian Michael Murphy is Associate Professor of American Studies at Williams College and Faculty Associate at The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.