2025/11/11 by Amelia Acker · 2 voices
Computer Science · Arts and Humanities · #History of Computing Technologies #Digital and Traditional Archives Management #Research Data Management Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.7551/mitpress/14957.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2025/11/11 · openalex created_date 2025/11/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/19
The story of the rise of networked data through the evolution of archiving and digital storage. Archiving Machines advances our understanding of memory, information, and data by charting the struggle between the computing technologies that archive data and the cultures of information that have led to platforms that assert control over its use. Amelia Acker examines the origins of data archives and the computing processes of storage, exchange, and transmission. Each chapter introduces data archiving processes that relate to the evolution of data sovereignty we experience today: from magnetic tape and timesharing computer models from the 1950s, to the establishment of data banks and the rise of database processing and managed data silos in the 1970s, to file structures and virtual containers in cloud-based information services over the past 40 years.