Time, bits, and nickel: Managing digital and analog continuity

Abstract

In 1998, the Getty Center hosted the ''Time and Bits: Managing Digital Continuity'' conference, gathering the founders and thinkers of two San Francisco non-profit organizations interested in long-term thinking and archiving: the Internet Archive and the Long Now Foundation. This chapter proposes to discuss two different ways of archiving through time, in digital and analog formats, for virtual web contents and physical paper-based ones. It explores various types of archiving methods and tools and the management challenges they raise, in terms of time and space, but also innovation, maintenance, and ''continuity''. It depicts two distinct visions of the future of archiving which nonetheless converge in their mission of safeguarding, sharing, and giving access to information and knowledge for the decades and centuries to come.