Cloud Architectures and Cultural Memory - Challenges of Information Management Beyond the Cloud - page 13

content but software becomes much more deeply implicated in this cloud setting of
some very problematic unintended consequences for our ability as individuals to
preserve material and consequently for that material to find its way into the more
formal and more protected cultural record across time.

6 In Conclusion

Our time has run out. So, I hope I have given you a couple of broad ideas to consider.
One is the increasingly deep involvement of computation in access to content. I
think there is no question that we are moving into a political environment and into a
set of scholarly norms that place a great deal more emphasis on open and public
access to data, access to writing, access to primary source material that is in various
hands. That access increasingly includes computation and we do not have good
strategies yet for how we are going to provision and fund the necessary computational
resources, how we are going to manage the relationships between computation and
content, and where we are going to situate that computation between the stewards of
content and the people who need to use that content. Similarly, I hope I have given
you some things to think about in terms of the new relationship between the
individual's accumulation of memories and observations and creative works and
records, and the world of commercial services and social media that are spread across
the cloud, and some of what that may mean for the future of the cultural record and
our ability to preserve this record.
I also hope I have given you some questions to ponder about as you grapple with
the rapidly-developing idea of software as a service that is cloud-based, and that, as a
consequence of that move to the cloud, really starts to take individuals out of the
control of the character and rate of evolution of that software in a much more
aggressive and comprehensive way than has been the case in the past. I am not at all
certain that we collectively understand the implications of this, particularly as it
relates to the preservation of “digital lives” at the personal level, which, in turn, also
has implications for the future of the overall cultural record. I cannot urge you enough
to think very carefully and critically about this, because the stakes are very high.
Thank you.