We the Dead

Preserving Data at the End of the World

De: Brian Michael Murphy

Narrado por: 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. Artfully written and packed with provocative ideas, this haunting book illuminates the dark places of the data complex and the ways it increasingly blurs the lines between human and machine, biological body and data body, life and digital afterlife.

©2022 Brian Michael Murphy (P)2022 Audible, Inc.

Accessible and thought-provoking

Erudite and well-researched, but simultaneously snarky and entertaining, this book made me see clearly for the first time the data infrastructure and beliefs that are so deeply engrained in our modern life experience that I hardly even noticed them. I listened to this in a single weekend because I found it so fascinating. This is one of those books that you can’t “unread” - it has changed the lens through which I see the world. Great stuff. Highly recommend.