" Which sporting event telecast is destined for oblivion? The vast
majority."
- Of course this is true for everything from email to all those objects on
MOOs and MUDs, Fidonet and BBS materials, etc. It's also true for notes,
early drafts, etc. A question that interests me - What is meant by
oblivion?
This is fundamentally related to material deteriorations, lack of redund-
ancies, playback technologies which have disappeared or no longer
function. It's also fundamentally related to the glut of dead media (see
the mailing list) which tends towards waste or landfill - or untethered
media, which fascinate me, such as all those old and nameless 19th-century
photographs one finds at flea markets. There's something uncanny about all
of this, an uncanniness that exists only so long as partial identity
remains (i.e. this is an 8-inch floppy, this is a tintype). Perhaps
Barthes' punctum is increasingly characterized, not by presence within an
image, but by non-presence within the haunted past.
- Alan
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