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Richard Holeton’s hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, and Caitlin Fisher’s Flash net art narrative These Waves of Girls constitute two recent works the lab has saved within the parameters of this ethic.Īlong with its irreverent tone and comical plot, Figurski is important in its reflection of 1990s counterculture and for its complex structure: Three characters search for a mechanical pig across three locations while under the influence of acid. Our aim is to make as much digital literary art accessible to the public as possible so that future scholars can have the opportunity to study and make sense of it as individual examples of specific modes of human expression and collectively as works produced during the period Jay David Bolter has called “the late age of print” (1) and Paul Ceruzzi, “the digital information age” (xvi). It is not nostalgia nor personal preferences that drives the preservation of digital literary art that we do in the Electronic Literature Lab, but rather this ethic Rumsey articulates. However, as cost is weighed against decisions of “what to keep and what to lose” (159), we need to acknowledge our “obligation to future generations” to ensure they have the opportunity to decide for themselves what is valuable” (176). the technology, trained labor, space, time) can be staggering. Under these circumstances, the investment of resources required for digital preservation (i.e.

Unfortunately, our capacity to save our cultural artifacts is, according to Rumsey, “falling dramatically behind our capacity to generate information” (1).

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The most obvious, of course, is maintaining digital artifacts that have been created for access on outmoded operating systems, such as Macintosh System 7-MacOS X 10.4 or with fragile software like Flash. Preserving the memory of digital culture, particularly the artistic output of that culture, involves a set of challenges indigenous to its materiality. In When We Are No More, Abby Smith Rumsey argues that culture is a “a collective form of memory” and that memory impacts not only the survival of a species but of that species’ culture (my emphasis, 13). The Ethics of Digital Preservation: Obligation to Future Generations Grigar’s essay lays out the ethics underlying the work we do in the Electronic Literature Lab. This essay below is an expanded version of the one currently running in The Digital Review, Issue 2: “Critical Making, Critical Design,” a journal edited by Will Luers.

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