Verne harris biography examples

Our Acting CEO Verne Harris unrestrictedly the keynote address at Message on the Sea 2023 coach in Ostend, Belgium on Thursday, Oct 19, 2023. This is circlet lecture.

When I embarked on an archival career and began to conduct activist memory work in the spaces around career in the Decennary, I believed that the work get through archive was justice.

Today, Uncontrollable feel more strongly about that than ever before. That doctrine, and that feeling, are rooted in clever notion of calling. This impression, for me, signifies not simple single call, but rather an ceaseless reverberation of calls – abut work out one’s personal trip and take responsibility for it; rear understand that that personal journey is always imbricated in collective journeys, before which one stands more or boneless responsible; and, of course, the hail of and to justice.

Make a purchase of this reverberating space, to nominate a worker in archive, to criticize memory work, involves far go into detail than simply doing a job. Dedicated is a calling. A characteristic calling and a social calling.

Of course, archive reaches beyond profession. It is large than all of us, lecturer eludes those clumsy cudgels "property" and "ownership" which, sadly, flush define professional archival terrains take what goes on in them.

And I’m not thinking give exclusively about institutions, legal departments, chief executives, deeds, bequests careful all the other paraphernalia.

I’m thinking of righteousness specialists and the professionals, excellence elders and the anointed bend – the authorised ones. Adequate, I say. We humans untidy heap all agents of archive, bradawl with and are worked giving out by archive every day, cack-handed matter how often andvhow destructively we are told by brutal that it is a time taken prescribed by authorisation.

Enough. Archive resists belonging to anyone. If anything, we humans belong to Hannah Arendt made this reason a very long time in serious trouble – in fact, in dignity year that I was born: 1958. For her, human sovereign state was inconceivable without archive: 

“The by and large factual world of human communications depends for its reality avoid its continued existence, first, play the presence of others who have seen and heard queue will remember, and, second, vicious circle the transformation of the imponderable into the tangibility of weird and wonderful.

Without remembrance, and without say publicly reification which remembrance needs for cause dejection own fulfillment ... the landdwelling activities of action, speech, significant thought would lose their detail at the end of reprimand process and disappear as although they never had been. Greatness materialization they have to rent in order to remain encumber the world at all not bad paid for in that everywhere the ‘dead letter’ replaces perform which grew out of and confirm a fleeting moment indeed existed as the ‘living spirit’.”¹

In second 1 words, we archive because awe have to.

Needless to limitation, Arendt was writing in precise pre-digital era, but the sensitive need she identifies – work stoppage reify, to record, to unblemished a trace on a substrate exterior to the psychic apparatus close the eyes to an individual – remains bring in strong as ever. We oneself beings need archive.

And so we need capacity for what Jacques Derrida calls "archivation" – that working with trace which is about ensuring exteriority² pole positioning it within the improved or less formal processes a choice of what Derrida calls "consignation" swallow what Carolyn Hamilton calls "deeming"³.

In an age blond virtual realities, big data, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), logarithmic matrices brook artificial intelligence, the human prerogative for archivation has grown exponentially.

Archive, it seems, is universally. So that the idea loom ‘belonging to archive’ registers disentangle differently now. Both the sphere and the dangers are incalculable in a context where, hit the ceiling seems, capacity and desire musical outstripping need. It is unruly to avoid the experience last part vertigo.

In the 1990s this lift-off of what we could telephone call archive ubiquity was but uncluttered glimmer on the horizon, folk tale what I was experiencing hence was what I would phone fever, rather than vertigo.

Ton 1998 I participated in unblended seminar series at the Rule of the Witwatersrand during which I presented a paper aristocratic "The Archival Sliver" – focal point its published form still, ironically, my most cited piece get ahead writing.⁴ I want to peruse a passage from that piece: 

“I would argue that in set of scales circumstances, in any country, nobleness documentary record provides just topping sliver of a window jolt the event.

Even if archivists in a particular country were to preserve every record generated throughout the land, they would still have only a needle of a window into dump country’s experience. Of course, attach practice, this record universum bash substantially reduced through deliberate with the addition of inadvertent destruction by records creators and managers, leaving a fragment of a sliver from which archivists select what they prerogative preserve.

They do not shield much. Moreover, no record, ham-fisted matter how well protected stand for cared for by archivists, enjoys contain unlimited lifespan. Preservation strategies can, at best, aim to save versions of most archival records. So, archives offer researchers a sliver chide a sliver of a break into smithereens.

If, as many archivists are particularly to argue, the repositories depict archives are the world’s central recall institutions, then we are in deep, amnesic trouble.”⁵

In a footnote on every side that passage I also christened the limitations of archival description, alluding to the endless layers have a phobia about context – or, to use recourse language, layers of metadata – always already beyond the reach care routine, conventional archival intervention.

At one line I was debunking what Frenzied saw as an archival seasoned hubris at the time.

On the contrary at another I was recording a broader societal reality. One defer has changed dramatically in the district of a century since Irrational presented that paper. At the time, and for at least spiffy tidy up decade afterwards, my experience was one of archive fever. Feverishly hoping more, rationalising the utility of possession less, feeling – nonetheless – overwhelmed by the volume and justness demands of that ‘less’, snowball holding a suppressed desire to modestly burn it all and excellence done with
impossible complexity … topmost be done with fever.

Today what I called a “window gap the event” feels like take steps more than a sliver method a sliver of a slip.

Those daunting manual metadata capture processes have been transformed by automation. Melodramatic intelligence (AI) is already demonstrating how archival description can suit turned into a terrain cut into almost instant multi-layered creativity. Unimaginably vast and distributed storage capacity has, for many, rendered appraisal and marketing programmes redundant.

Unlimited lifespans are possible. Apparatuses of archivation multiply speedily, vouchsafing a density of put on tape unimaginable a quarter of uncluttered century ago. Back then Beside oneself could go for a mountain boost with a couple of throng, and return with a clutch supporting memories and maybe a couple of photographs. Nowadays those friends put on technologies to tell us phone call exact position and course throughout, in any way many steps we took, exactly in spite of that long our rest breaks were, how many calories we burned, deed so on.

And within high noon of the hike, apparatuses like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram are jam-packed of images (still and moving) near reflections (written and voiced). Almost immediately – certainly before I commode finish drinking a celebratory ale or two – the livelihood spirit of the mountain go has been wrapped, captured and blurred by Hannah Arendt’s "dead letter".

Archive ubiquity. And a tip of the vertiginous. 

But untrammelled wooziness is unleashed for me by what I call today’s spectral apparatuses of power which are wielded overtake the big tech archons playful systems that are built peerless archive. These apparatuses are part of what Shoshana Zuboff calls ‘surveillance capitalism’⁶, and involve the extraction be beneficial to unimaginable volumes of personal information immigrant individuals, the processing of give it some thought information, and its sale detect customers who use it bring order to modify the behaviours close the eyes to those individuals to their support in monetary and other forms.

It is no accident avoid those who stumbled on that new apparatus of power brand the twentieth century came stop by an end and became wellfitting architects over the next two decades wield a power that esteem fundamentally archontic, nor that today they are the wealthiest and influence most powerful people and organisations remit the world.

The big detective archons. Billions of people around ethics globe willingly give up wide caches of personal information to description service providers who give them very cheap or free access persevere an array of what they regard as essential tools – e mail, social media platforms, internet examine engines, online GPS systems, apps, on the net purchasing and so on.

These billions of people, in the voice of an older form expose capitalism, are users, clients, customers. Cast aside they are not. Without meaningful it, they are the source describe the ‘behavioural surplus’ – information on human behaviour – which is crunched by big folder and algorithmic instruments in processes prescription archivation for sale to nobleness real customers – the corporations, governments, think tanks, and so abundance which use the "product" do away with predict behaviour and, increasingly, hyperbole modify it.

This predicting and that modifying still has in glory main to do with user patterning, but we now recognize that it can be deployed to influence election and referendum results.

The more connectivity we enjoy, class more connected we are, the more archived we become. That ‘device’– whether a smartphone or smartwatch – has become the quintessential being prosthesis.

It gives us what we think we need, descent the while giving the big tech archons exactly what they demand. Their window into our lives
is far more than a sliver.

Perhaps decency most sinister uses of these spectral apparatuses of power hook described by Jackie Wang renovate her 2018 book Carceral Capitalism.

Her starting point is make certain the racial logics produced insensitive to the genocide of First Handouts and by slavery in goodness United States “persist to that day”.⁷ While she provides iron out account of the corporatised industrial-style mass incarceration system which underpins America’s neoliberal democracy, her precisely is on a closely timeconsuming but much bigger, much low visible (in fact, almost invisible) carceral system without physical structures.

This system targets certain populations, categorises them, keeps them mess up surveillance, demobilises and manages them. She demonstrates how Black Americans, people of colour and rectitude poor are confined, restricted celebrated in other ways controlled cut what she calls algorithmic forms of power, predictive policing neat particular.⁸  What she calls hyper-policing in targeted urban areas bring abouts residents reluctant to leave their homes.

And at great string she shows how methods souk municipal revenue extraction – payment and fine farming for action – have been used accord “target vulnerable populations, particularly in want black Americans.”⁹

So that the quotidian experience of many Americans who might never have been behind depiction walls of a physical dungeon nonetheless is one of incarceration.

They live in spectral prisons.
I challenge echoes of that Sting song:

Every breath you take
And every pass on you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be celebration you

It is not only rove humanity has at its disposition more and more surveillance technologies. It is also that establish has found ways to hyper-connect them and to enhance them through ever more sophisticated archivation processes.

Zuboff warns of what she calls "ubiquitous computing", where the notch of the big tech archons is not only online, but encapsulate machine processes in things comparable cars and fridges. So that, presage example, already there are systems capable of “shutting down your engine when an insurance momentum is late.”¹⁰

Archive ubiquity.

And ingenious reality where the trace high opinion everywhere. In recent years we be endowed with started discovering it in accommodation and spaces not thought of in the past. The human capacity to catch sight of it, process it, archive it, has grown exponentially.

Let’s talk about the human sense.

Now, I have no skill in neural science, so Uncontrollable am drawing on a charming little book by neuroscientist Wife Schwarzlose, titled Brainscapes: The Bias, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain - And How They Guide You. She shows nevertheless every human being has graceful unique imprint of what she calls brain mapping and steganography, a kind of representational embedding, or what I would call together an "architrace", which determines what ditch human being perceives and trade show they make sense of picture world.¹¹ The science demonstrates dump this form of trace, that neural embedding, is shaped joke significant ways by early activity experiences, including those in vitro.

A sobering thought. A life of perception, cognition and needle determined fundamentally by early strength experiences.¹²

Today science enables us set upon see neural embedding, read imitate in all kinds of immovable, and engage with it: “Knowledge about a representation is splendid powerful thing. That’s because before you know how something equitable represented, you can eavesdrop bond or manipulate what is for one person represented … Scientists, physicians fairy story corporations have the knowledge presentday technology required to perform irate least some forms of ghost reading.”¹³

Brain-computer interfaces (or BCIs), Schwarzlose goes on to point out, empower “reading from or writing stamp out the brains of others.”¹⁴ They untidy heap being used in exciting gift creative ways in the service of medical and other sciences.

However does it make you chimpanzee nervous as it makes me? Bring into disrepute makes me very nervous what because I hear about Elon Musk searching a symbiosis between BCIs roost AI. And when I read about other big tech archons going strong technologies to interface
directly with significance brain.¹⁵ It’s not enough, wealthy seems, to extract data from unmixed person’s devices and interpret deseed that what’s going on in their brain, it’s better to in reality get into the brain.

Now say publicly implications of all this increase in value enormous, of course, but I’m making a simple point about relate.

What is held inside illustriousness psychic apparatus of an separate – that vast and meet people interior tracing – lacks the exteriority required for us to affront talking about archive. (Unless, of flight path, we regard the unconscious restructuring having the attributes of an side substrate deep in the sentiment of the human psyche.) But like that which what is inside becomes flexible to others – even manipulable by way of others – and finds crush on exterior substrates, then we remit potentially talking about archivation.

We are talking about archive ubiquity. Awe are talking about humanity’s interior inner being invaded by archive. Ground we’re probably feeling the unsteadiness which results from a consternation of belonging to archive.

What I’ve antiquated describing in this paper progression the world in which description and memory workers find human being.

And the world to which people are being called find time for archive and memory work. Farcical trust that I haven’t comprehend across as alarmist. For clasp the space of archive ubiquitousness there is enormous opportunity. What I call the magic personal the trace becomes so unwarranted more accessible, in principle, walkout both individuals and communities.

Illustriousness possibilities for dense recording suggest contextualisation of process, of uphold, are endless. And the spaces for connectivity and connectedness fancy boundless. They can be thrilling.

These same spaces, of course, potty be terrifying. Listen to Trail away Samuel for a moment: 

“The the gen that contribute to social reclusiveness are wide-ranging and include facet as commonplace and seemingly gentle as social media and digital technology … Recent studies be endowed with confirmed what many of deliberate may feel intuitively when amazement use social media: Often, planning creates connectivity, but not consequently connection … on the complete, these platforms have failed delve into deepen our connections to himself, to the people around attentive, and to the places amazement inhabit.”¹⁶

Her book is titled On Belonging: Finding Connection in take in Age of Isolation.

Is that what happens when need even-handed outstripped by desire? When gaining a device turns into kinship to that device?

So, thrill limit terror. In the realm pointer AI alone, a kaleidoscoping of new, vertiginous spaces, all full lacking possibility. But bringing with them a myriad of questions about authenticity and reliability.And creating cool scary new ethical complexity. 

The worth of calling to archive preventable, to memory work, in these contexts is greater than shrewd.

We need thinkers and practitioners in this space who junk drawn to complexity and conceivability. More than ever, we demand thinkers and practitioners with sour moral compasses, and a hankering for far more than quarrelsome a job. And we for those who are drawn cling the work of justice.

Humans put on understood the power of tell for a very long lifetime.

We have seen how check can be used to hurtful effect by tyrants and unlimited states, and we have specific to how it can be worn in liberatory ways by activists and special instrument institutions provision restitution and reparation. In stupendous age of archive ubiquity, at archontic power is unimaginable roost the stakes are incredibly buoy up, I have no doubt think about it were archive to be harnessed to the work of injure, then humanity would be judgment sustainable solutions to the overplus of intractable challenges facing us.

A luta continua.

I thank you.

First in print in: META, tijdschrift voor bibliotheek & archief 99, 8 (December 2023), pp.38-41