ByThomas Coughlin,
Contributor.
I recently read a Norton pre-print book by Thomas S. Mullaney, a History Professor at Stanford University, called How We Disappear. As a person very involved in digital storage and long-term digital preservation, I found it a very interesting read.
I read most of the book while I was on a personal journey with my cousin in April to bring lots of family history stuff, after my mom died last October (my dad died in 2001), in a rented truck, from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to California, where now I live. Considering the topic of Dr. Mullaney’s book, it was a very appropriate topic.
Dr. Mullaney reflects on the deaths of his own parents and how human lives disappear, and the efforts people take to try to capture their family history and create meaning from what is left behind. In his book he ranges from discussing Claude Shannon’s information theory that enabled modern digital communication to discussing how he took a forensic approach to going through his dad’s office after he died to put all of his things into perspective, and the family secrets he unveiled in the process of doing so.
