Free Download We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World (Audiobook)
English | June 28, 2022 | ASIN: B0B4TVNZ11 | M4B@128 kbps | 9h 13m | 516 MB
Author: Brian Michael Murphy | Narrator: Roger Wayne
Locked away in refrigerated vaults, sanitized by gas chambers, and secured within bombproof caverns deep under mountains are America's most prized materials: the ever-expanding collection of records that now accompany each of us from birth to death. This data complex backs up and protects our most vital information against decay and destruction, and yet it binds us to corporate and government institutions whose power is also preserved in its bunkers, infrastructures, and sterilized spaces.
We the Dead traces the emergence of the data complex in the early 20th century and guides listeners through its expansion in a series of moments when Americans thought they were living just before the end of the world. Depression-era eugenicists feared racial contamination and the downfall of the White American family, while contemporary technologists seek ever denser and more durable materials for storing data, from micro-etched metal discs to cryptocurrency keys encoded in synthetic DNA.