The gathering of collective memory. A pre-literate notion of memory, in a communal way, something commemorative rather than putting a memory in a container. What we thought it was going to be changed completely. We are in that way changing our memory of what it was supposed to be. What are you able to collect? Memories? Objects? People? A collection of texts and people, collecting and composing each other? Somehow it's not even important that we have all the knowledge, what's important is the living, generative sense of the collection.

machine reading

Simon Browne

machine reading

see also scanning

Machines can read text, and process it in complex ways. Code may contain instructions for a computer to read a file, so that its contents may be then used as part of a program. An example of this in practice is in the catalogue details of books in the library (title, author, description, publisher, etc.), which can be downloaded rather than manually written. This involves communication between systems to search their databases; for example, taking these details from another source, such as books.google.com or goodreads.com.

Books can also be checked in and out of libraries by a variety of machine-reading methods such as barcode scanning, or using RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips inserted into the cover.


Image: An RFID tag – an object often contained within the cover of a public library book to track when it is checked in or out