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"Disquiet in the archives" in THE CONVERSATION #archiving
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Matt Finch
A nice piece from Australia's Stuart Kells in The Conversation this week, which may have some resonance for people working in KM too:
Given that collection and preservation decisions must often be made under the so-called "TUNA conditions" of turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity - and their value may only be revealed in hindsight - I take this as a good argument to
build a foresight capacity into collections strategy.
Precisely when you can't see what lies ahead for sure, you can manufacture plausible future contexts as vantage points on the present.
These can challenge current assumptions and help us make wiser decisions about what to collect, what to keep & how to keep it, and what its value might be as events unfold and circumstances change.
Complementing this is a nice Harvard working paper from Peter Scoblic on the idea that, when we can't decide confidently based on the models of the past, or make decisions by analogy to previous situations, we can manufacture plausible future
scenarios to help guide us:
"[...T]reating the future as plural and less knowable can, in theory, make [knowledge!] managers more sensitive to changes in the present, reduce overconfidence in specific courses
of action, and render mental models more flexible, thereby improving adaptability to whatever future does manifest"
Happy weekend, all --
MATTHEW FINCH
Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School
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Carol H. Tucker
AND this is why historians will tell you there is no such thing as an historical fact - it is all interpretation.... On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 11:28 AM Matt Finch <Matthew.Finch@...> wrote:
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Carol H. Tucker "I only care about the words that flutter from your mind. They are the only thing you truly own. The only thing I will remember you by. I will not fall in love with your bones and skin. I will not fall in love with the places you have been. I will not fall in love with anything but the words that flutter from your Extraordinary Mind." ~ Andre Jordan |
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Dave Snowden
But there us a difference between a coherent interpretation and a conspiracy theory
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Fascinating. On a more mundane level, I do tell people that, in many cases, you really don't know what will be useful in future. In the stable, predictable cases, yes; in many others, no. However, paradoxically, we don't want that to be an excuse to keep everything - not least because of the GHG footprint of this stuff, but also because simply retaining it is absolutely no guarantee it will ever be found used in future when its moment appears. Started a lot of thoughts!
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Yes, agreed, the truth is not out there. I love paradox. I'm completely on the side of reason and progress, and science in the sense of the model that currently best explains the observations. But recognising this is provisional.
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