I’ve been doing some family research this past year, trying to uncover my mother’s father’s heritage. One of the most powerful tools has been the online editions of the U.S. Census from the late 19th and early 20th Century. Looking at these forms closely, you’re able to piece together the mosaic of a person’s life. The research has been rich and engaging.
In 2083 (when the 2010 Census is scheduled to be released to the public), my great-great-grandchild won’t be able to pull the same richness of information from the Census. This year, the form has been reduced to 10 questions. Here it is.
Search the blogosphere and you’ll find a lot of discussion about the Census, the political process of generating the form and assorted levels of disappointment about how little information there is.
I’m struck by a different angle: We’re seduced by the easy digitization of identity and history. For any of us living a digital life, we’ve got a remarkable chronicle of the current time. But almost none of it is tangible, like the old, wrinkled photos my mother had of her father in Arkansas in the early 1900′s. Those five or six artifacts helped to organize the parameters of a rich dive into the archives.
We’re living a kind of constant state of Jung’s collective unconscious, where we all share awareness through the stream, molding perception, archetype and reality. But we’ve consigned our archives to the stream as well, up in the cloud, or in fragile digital bits. In 100 years, what will be know about today will depend on the ability of institutions and individuals to archive this new storage format. I’m skeptical.
