On Identity: Permanence in Archiving
Ethereum’s Infinite Garden metaphor highlights the importance of diversity and experimentation in the ecosystem.
The idea that we can be here one minute and gone the next is not one that humans have ever been fond of. We wrote books, created majestic art, created entire cultures, all for the sake of keeping the evidence of our existence intact for the coming generations. Archiving is core to who and what we are as humans. In a bid to preserve these cultures, to hold ourselves accountable, to store memories, we became storytellers. As a way of making research and compliance more feasible, we documented everything like our very lives depended on it.
Permanence for the sake of Study
Contrary to the concept of transience, permanence is the enduring of something for an indefinite period of time. It implies that something remains constant and does not disappear. We use documented information to learn and to evolve, without it, our progressions would likely take a lot longer than we wished.
Many Black & Brown cultures, mine included, struggle with their lack of documented history. We have had our libraries burnt, our artefacts stolen, yet to be returned, we had our traditions rewritten from a place of deficit, how then can we identify the truth about who we are, about who our people were? We know that history rhymes, so to study this history provides a glimpse into what is possible, giving one the opportunity to create space for understanding, and perhaps, for contextual leadership.
Hypothetically, we could build new libraries, create new artefacts that resemble whatever is left in our collective memories, but what if they all disappear again? Beyond that, our people are too vast, too far and too widely scattered across this plane of Earth that not all would be able to learn from these documentations. We need a method of archiving that adds to the physicality of libraries, and transcends time; a method that preserves provenance.
An NFT for Everything then?
One of the more popular forms of provenance are of course NFTs, many of us have bought one or two, some for the beauty of the thing, some for the potential bag. NFTs in my humble opinion could be a great starting point for the preservation of cultures, if done intentionally. Should we turn everything into an NFT then? Well, not quite.
Archiving is the systematic collecting and preserving of records and/or documents to ensure longer term accessibility. It requires a creation of systems and relevant metadata to facilitate the processes of research and retrieval ~ sounds like NFTs to me.
Arkive, which is a global community of members who are redefining culture and building the first decentralised, physical museum, uses the idea of community and technology to archive culture. In a January 9th article, writer and curator Simon Wu states that “uncertain times lead to existential, spiritual questioning. We’ve seen a return to our roots, to the land, and a reevaluation of our most basic assumptions.”
This time period we are in is seeing both a grand beginning of new ways and a horrid end to old systems. We are seeing a need for the application of the concept of transparency, of knowledge & information being public goods, of every truth being deserving of telling. It’s not that archiving and creating the opportunity of cultural permanence are impossible, simply that in this era, capitalism & quick media tend take precedence. I sincerely hope we can evolve beyond this, or at least, see the possibilities of this infinite garden we are all living in, beyond the bags. I think then, we can truly become holistically introspective human beings.
