katie.rorison
“In the late-modern, multi-mediated digital landscape, boundaries are blurred between past and present, information and entertainment, the real and the hyper-real, author and reader, writing and speech, and elite and popular culture.” (Dodge 2002, p. 17)
Archives that act as a base for individual and collective memory and at the same time form social groupings and flows are undoubtedly quite valuable. With value, comes influence, and archives as ubiquitous to western metropolis’ as bus timetables fit this description. Through their use as archives of memory, and what this archived information denotes both spatially (bus routes) and temporally (bus schedules), they act as bases from which individual and collective experiences are formed. The quote by Bernadine Dodge above, references the shift in boundaries that are a result of our multi-media digital landscape. Using the example of bus timetables, I would argue that this digital landscape now colludes with the physical one. Dodge (2002, p. 17) also asks the question of whether a digitized document is a real representation of its ‘original’. In this case, is the original the printed bus timetable and the representation the up-to-date timetable on a smartphone application? Or is it the other way around? Temporal-based archives such as this one, poses an interesting question on whether the original or beginning matters, or whether the present or ‘now’ is just as important as an archival reference point.
When thinking about a live bus timetable that digital technology like this allows, Dodge’s (2002, p. 18) statement, “For the electronically sampled, digitized image, there is no meaningful original which inheres irrevocably in the reincarnation”, is somewhat true. Only to a certain point, can you go back in time (to see previous bus times). The focus is always on the now or the future. However, with a printed version, you can go back or forward at your own leisure; however this may be pointless as the information (as many urban public transport users would tell you) is hardly accurate. This form of public and private (personalized timetable’s on ones phone for example) archives is an example of a response to a cultural activity that uses learned forms of knowledge to create a product that then builds new monopolies of knowledge; as well as directs present and future actions.
Dodge, B, 2002, 'Across the Great Divide: Archival Discourse and the (Re)presentations of the Past in Late-Modern Society', Archivaria, Vol. 53.
“In the late-modern, multi-mediated digital landscape, boundaries are blurred between past and present, information and entertainment, the real and the hyper-real, author and reader, writing and speech, and elite and popular culture.” (Dodge 2002, p. 17)
Archives that act as a base for individual and collective memory and at the same time form social groupings and flows are undoubtedly quite valuable. With value, comes influence, and archives as ubiquitous to western metropolis’ as bus timetables fit this description. Through their use as archives of memory, and what this archived information denotes both spatially (bus routes) and temporally (bus schedules), they act as bases from which individual and collective experiences are formed. The quote by Bernadine Dodge above, references the shift in boundaries that are a result of our multi-media digital landscape. Using the example of bus timetables, I would argue that this digital landscape now colludes with the physical one. Dodge (2002, p. 17) also asks the question of whether a digitized document is a real representation of its ‘original’. In this case, is the original the printed bus timetable and the representation the up-to-date timetable on a smartphone application? Or is it the other way around? Temporal-based archives such as this one, poses an interesting question on whether the original or beginning matters, or whether the present or ‘now’ is just as important as an archival reference point.
When thinking about a live bus timetable that digital technology like this allows, Dodge’s (2002, p. 18) statement, “For the electronically sampled, digitized image, there is no meaningful original which inheres irrevocably in the reincarnation”, is somewhat true. Only to a certain point, can you go back in time (to see previous bus times). The focus is always on the now or the future. However, with a printed version, you can go back or forward at your own leisure; however this may be pointless as the information (as many urban public transport users would tell you) is hardly accurate. This form of public and private (personalized timetable’s on ones phone for example) archives is an example of a response to a cultural activity that uses learned forms of knowledge to create a product that then builds new monopolies of knowledge; as well as directs present and future actions.
Dodge, B, 2002, 'Across the Great Divide: Archival Discourse and the (Re)presentations of the Past in Late-Modern Society', Archivaria, Vol. 53.