We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World

by Brian Michael Murphy

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 twentieth century and guides readers 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 more durable and denser materials for storing data, from microetched 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.

Genres: History, Technology, Nonfiction, Library Science

320 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2022

About the author

Brian Michael Murphy is a media archaeologist and writer whose work cuts across disciplines and genres. He is Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Williams College and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

His book We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), explores Americans’ obsession with preserving increasingly vast amounts of data in all formats, from paper to microfilm, to digital files and information written in synthetic DNA. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review, Lapham’s Quarterly, Narrative, and in Italian translation in Ácoma, among other places. He co-edited a special issue of Media-N on the “Afterlives of Data,” and previously served as Managing and Nonfiction Editor at Northwest Review.

A Fulbright Scholar (Italy), his work has also received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Ohio Arts Council. He earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies from The Ohio State University, where he was a Presidential Fellow, and went on to teach at Miami University, and Bennington College, where he also served as Dean of the College.

He is a former Director of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, where he taught for several summers, and is a founding board member at Outpost—a residency in southern Vermont for writers of color from the United States and Latin America.

Reviews

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

We Americans, we the dead, now have a new condition: the data complex. The data complex is both material, out there — in our libraries, archives, data centers, bombproof bunkers — and psychological, inside us — in our minds where we fear the progressions of time and decay, and place our faith in the bulwarks and technological magic of the cloud.

Brian Michael Murphy is a poet and a “media archeologist” (oh, and a Fulbright Scholar and the Dean of the College and Director of the MFA in Public Action at Bennington College with a PhD in Comparative Studies from Ohio State University, where he was a Presidential Fellow) and his latest book (based on research from his doctoral dissertation), We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World, is one of the most philosophically interesting things I’ve read in a long time. I thought this was going to be a book about the Singularity — which it’s not, until it sort of is — but it’s even more out there than that: Tracing the history of America’s information collection and storage systems (what Murphy calls “the data complex”), We the Dead lifts the veil on some dark history, a shadowy present, and an uncertain future; it’s the kind of read that makes you wonder, “How are people not talking about this stuff all the time?” I was interested in absolutely everything here — from the broad historical context that Murphy provides to his personal anecdotes of visits to public libraries and military-guarded deep-mountain storage bunkers — but if I had a caution it’s that Murphy writes from a definite point-of view: this is not a dispassionate academic work, and it solely focuses on the American experience, but as an accessibly-written exposé of that experience, it often blew my mind. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Over and over again, the data complex expanded in those moments when many Americans felt they were quite possibly living just prior to the end of the world, from the Depression and the hottest moments of the early Cold War, to this moment of human-induced climate change and ecological disaster. Americans now preserve more data — from paper documents to microfilm reels to digital files — than any other civilization in history. This book retraces our steps to show how we arrived here, from the first “permanent” time capsules, created during the Depression to preserve American culture for 5,000-plus years, to subterranean vaults in abandoned mines that now house artifacts of every information medium: etchings, rag paper magazines, magnetic tape, microfilm reels, wax cylinders, and digital hard drives.

Data collection first became important in the US after the Civil War (with increased urbanisation and a need to distribute pensions to veterans), but it really ramped up during the Depression, with corporate America realising that data preservation was essential to the protection of Capitalism and liberal democracy and vital to the needs of the federal government rolling out its social programs. This period also saw eugenicists burying bomb-shaped time capsules for the future (elegaic messages from a time of threatened racial purity, apparently) and archivists attempting to kill bookworms with gas chambers filled with Zyklon B: the instability of the times leading up to WWII seemed to have conflated the needs to kill and preserve. And Murphy makes the point that this is what happens every time Americans feel they are in a time of heightened crisis: The Cold War saw the frantic building of bomb shelters (many of which eventually became underground bunkers for data storage) and suburbanisation (with white people and their artifacts dispersing, leaving POC in the bullseyes of city centers); to the aftermath of 9/11 (which saw the further dispersal of physical and digital artifacts and an astronomical rise in clandestine data collection, now backed up on multiple systems in bomb-proof cold storage); to the climate crisis of today — Norway has been selling itself as natural and permanent cold storage, but when even the “permafrost” at the site of the Svaldbad Global Seed Vault has started melting, where to put all that data when it needs to be kept cold to prevent disintegration and industrial refrigeration further contributes to the warming of the planet? Space is cold. But DNA is the most efficient storage system we know. Wonder what the billionaires are betting on.

(Parenthetically: In one of the recurring themes throughout We the Dead, I found it interesting that American billionaires seem to have always understood that data storage was where it’s at. Dale Carnegie funded all those libraries. Herman “the Mushroom King '' Knaust turned defunct icehouses along the Hudson River into mushroom farms and then into data storage facilities; the abandoned mine he bought eventually becoming the iconic Iron Mountain National Data Center. Bill Gates once thought that photo licensing would be a winning investment and he bought up all the rights he could [since sold off to a Chinese company, which now owns the rights to Marilyn Monroe struggling with her skirt and Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue] — and today Gates is a major investor in data storage on DNA.)

The so-called cloud does not exist immaterially in the air above our heads but resides very materially in these remote, reinforced, transcendent underground spaces within a vast data preservation infrastructure that grew out of hauntings of destruction, and fears of radioactive and racial contamination. We have now repurposed this infrastructure in ways that reflect our current fears, hopes, and persistent impossible desires for permanent data invulnerable to the forces of (cyber) terrorism, natural disasters, and the indomitable force of decay that inheres in all media artifacts.

In a case of “I guess I knew that and never really thought about it”, Murphy repeatedly makes the point that “the cloud” isn’t some invisible haze of permanent, ephemeral information that will outlast us: it is the physical storage of vast amounts of data (he uses terms like exabytes and yottabytes that mean nothing to me, but they sound like a lot) and it’s held on discs and microchips and film, using processors that become obsolete every five years or so, and the more that physical items (film, paper, books) are archived, the fewer of them that are digitised or indexed or ever again made available for human interaction. The more data we collect, the more we decide this stuff is important and attempt to back it up to the cloud, the more we risk it becoming less permanent. On the other hand, the entire internet could fit into a shoebox-sized amount of DNA; everything that could be known about you could be very easily written into your own DNA and constantly updated. How’s that for immortality?

Ultimately, this is a pretty dark story: governments and corporations attempt to ensure their own survival through ever-growing data collection and storage — a process we participate in with our smartphones and internet use — and not only are there dangers inherent in hackers “scraping” or “mining” our data to use against us, but the more we rely on this data being stored somewhere safely and permanently, the more risk there is for it to degrade or disappear entirely. As for the Singularity, Murphy writes that we have already become cyborgs “as human biochips are now embedded in the cyborganism of the data complex”:

If life were an early Cold War B movie where extraterrestrial marauders are scanning Earth for life and treasure, which organism would appear to reign supreme on this lush planet ? Certainly not the humans. For the humans are working feverishly to pull minerals from the ground and refine them, to build data centers and lash them together with fiber-optic cables laid across oceans and deserts, to connect all these machines through invisible tethers of light attached to satellites ringing the globe, and to spend most of their waking hours every day staring at screens and feeding data to the cyborganism that is the data complex. Even when these strange little creatures are not clicking and scrolling, they are carrying devices that perpetually transmit data about their location, the number of steps they take, and their resting heart rate to be recorded in the several million silicon bellies of the supreme beast. Even while they sleep, the data complex grips humans’ wrists through smartwatches and counts their heartbeats.

Not what I was expecting, but incredibly interesting and well-written. I hope this will be widely read.

[Elizabeth Mellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and University of North Carolina Press for the ARC of this. I switched back and forth between the Audible edition that I purchased when I was reading this.

This is definitely full of information that I had no experience with, the cover and topic just sounded really intriguing. The author is, at times, very funny, which I appreciated to help break up some of the drier bits. Overall, I think if you are really interested in how data is stored and how paranoid humans are about their data storage, you will find this interesting as well. I wish the whole tone had leaned harder into funny/conversational, but I’m happy I read it and learned some new things I’d never given much thought to before.

[Emma Strawbridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard the author speak at amherst last semester so i thought this would be a good read. i like how he takes us through the evolution of dada storage and how he investigates why it’s so overwhelmingly american in practice, but i wish he talked about that and compared it to other countries. the section “typical german and japanese cities” in the chapter “bombproof cavemen” was horrifying. i also wanted to hear more about what he thought about the data complex and what it said about american ideology

[Amelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But if we're protecting [ephemera/artifacts] for the sake of future users, once those future users arrive, won't they again be unable to view it or see it or touch it, in order to protect it for the sake of future users?"

A dense but intriguing book about the lifespan and history of data collection. Murphy weaves us through libraries, cold war bunkers, ways of preserving physical data, and how data preservation has evolved with technology. I've listed this book as library science, largely because--surprise--I'm a librarian. Data information science is kinda my thing. I will say, though, I was expecting this book to be more about where data is at now and where it is going rather than starting from the beginning.

Did you know that libraries used Zyklon to disinfect books fewer than 100 years ago? Or that data preservation companies have bought and utilized cold war bunkers and old mines to use colder temperatures to save physical ephemera? Or that bookworms actually do exist?

The science portion of it lost me a bit, as I'm more concerned with the why, the more human side of data. But that's not to say that this book wasn't hugely interesting. I'm still trying to grasp it, in total honesty. I had no idea that some data is protected with 24/7 armed security, though I did know that data is fallible and can be lost. In libraries and archives, it can be lost to fires. Even on the "cloud", this near-imaginary weightless data archive is physical with malls being repurposed and wreaking havoc on our environment. There, data is also fallible.

What do we protect and why do we protect it? We protect whatever somebody pays us to protect. We protect cultural artifacts. We protect information. We protect it for the future. For personal use. For community use, such as in time capsules.

Where Murphy is concerned with the longevity of such data and the lengths we go through to maintain and retain it, I wonder what it matters to keep some data when all of us are...well, dead. Does it then matter that we protect films that nobody can access? Is it just a type of cultural and historical hoarding? What does it matter that data preservation is something that rich people can afford? Certain directors have originals of their films stored. Even Beyonce has hours upon hours--years, perhaps, of videos, photographs, interviews that warranted a library job posting to catalog and archive.

Murphy, of course, cannot answer these questions. They are too big for anyone to answer.

What Murphy does answer, however, is what our personal data might look like after we as individuals die. We have data backed up with our social media, emails, account numbers--even our internet searches which may misidentify us as older or younger than we are, or as a completely different demographic! How will our data remember us if we don't remember our data?

There is just so much incredible information in this book that I think will interest librarians, archivists, and tech nerds alike. So thought-provoking and wonderful.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

We the Dead by Brian Michael Murphy is an intriguing look at our current state of data-connectedness through a look back at some of the times humans have become most interested in preserving data or at least a perception of history.

We seem to be most interested in data preservation, albeit at times selective data, when we believe ourselves and our societies to be in the gravest danger. Though this idea is new to me it certainly makes sense. Whether we hope some of us will emerge from whatever it is we fear, or whether we simply want to leave a record for whomever or whatever might find it, it triggers our realization of finitude and our desire for infinitude (to borrow Kierkegaard's terms).

In our present, however, this obsession with data collection and storage has moved beyond leaving a record for "after the big event," whatever that event might be. It is now about making money in the here and now, surveilling people in the here and now, and disciplining people in the here and now. And we don't just accept it, we aid it, sometimes knowingly but often times unwittingly.

This book is a fascinating read as both history and philosophy and could easily plant seeds in the minds of future writers for many apocalyptic and dystopian novels. Unfortunately, it is also just as likely to plant seeds of how to use this data to rule, not govern, people even more than we are already being ruled. At the same time that this book entertains it also unsettles.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in where we have been, where we are, and where we may end up (end perhaps being the operative word). Whether you're interested in your biobody or your data body, you should be concerned with whether we, with both bodies together, are but parts of a larger (non-bio)body that considers us disposable and replaceable parts.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Simms · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid exploration of a niche subject. Murphy charts the history of various schemes to preserve data, from the optimistic (time capsules meant to be opened by our genetically perfect descendants in the year 8113 A.D.; the Voyager Records) to the mundane (ways to protect books from air pollution in early-industrial cities; the ever-growing digital archives of random crap held by modern companies) to the weird (gas chambers for killing bookworms; a performance artist's microscale etching of images onto a satellite in "graveyard orbit" around the Earth).

It's often interesting but rarely revelatory, and Murphy does sometimes lose the plot a little bit - for instance, spending a huge amount of time discussing American contests about who could be "the most typical American family" and all the racial, economic, and patriarchal stereotypes that entails; this is presumably to provide context for the weird eugenically-utopian beliefs held by some of the organizers of the long-scale time capsules he talks about, but it didn't really feel on-topic. Also, I was disappointed in the extremely cursory mention of the topic of how to warn future (indeed, very-far-future) humans about the dangers of nuclear waste storage sites. I've learned a little about that on my own outside of this book, and it's a fascinating subject (prone to outside-the-box ideas like bioluminescent cats) that fits the "End of the World" subtitle of this book to a T, so it's a shame not to include it here.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press for the ARC.

[Khirs · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the eARC provided in exchange for an honest and fair review.

"We the Dead" is, summed up in a word, fascinating. In a time where we are living multiple digital lives, where a good portion of us (me included) can't leave the house without our phones, where bits and pieces of all of our data gather in places here and there, consciously or unconsciously given, this book is a fascinating journey of the data-complex, of human recordkeeping and data-collecting and preservation of data.

Though the subject was fascinating and I've made a career out of reading long academic texts, I did keep checking to see how many pages I had left in some of the chapters just so I could stop for a while. It's fascinating, yes, but also lengthy. It would be a good addition to a relevant graduate classroom, I'm sure, but just to pick up and read, it did get difficult to maintain interest through an entire chapter sometimes.

Overall, though, it WAS fascinating, and I did enjoy Brian Michael Murphy's writing. I'm sure for those heavily invested in data collection and preservation, it'd be a thrilling read with less checking for how many pages are left. Some books just aren't for some people, and this one just wasn't for me. It was, though, pretty good nevertheless which I think speaks to Murphy as a writer.

4/5.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part dissertation, part journalistic feature story, WE THE DEAD is illuminating, frightening, and entertaining. Dr. Murphy details the evolution of data storage and the on going quest to make historical records eternal. Murphy examines the time capsule phenomenon primarily through the lens of the Westinghouse Corp of the 1930’s and its prolific support of Eugenics. These accounts give the reader insight as to the “typical American Family,” and how white supremacy was able to thrive due to massive propaganda in the marketplace.
Murphy furthermore explains the use of indestructible data storage due to the advanced weapons of World War Two, the threat of the Cold War, and the digital component of the computer developments.
The basic premise Murphy examines and explains is the age old quest of mankind to be immortal in some way, primarily through a tangible record of existence. Spattered with philosophy, WE THE DEAD is a fascinating account that will ignite interesting conversations. Four Cups of Infin-i-TEA, and a slice of Wonder Bread.

[MargaretDH · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murphy takes us through the evolution of the American obsession with preserving data, both in the sense of the written word (books, libraries) and records (census, banking and business records). Underlying this obsession is a fear of death and decay, and of apocalypse and Armageddon. There's a lot here about the obsession of making things last forever and what forever even means in a data context.

If this sort of thing sounds interesting to you, you should pick this up. This is extremely readable, and there's lots of personal observations from Murphy as he visits historical sites and data complexes/centres. But for all that, it's also fairly academic, and he spends a lot of time thinking about the cultural and philosophical mores that underpin all of this data preservation. My only critique is that this is completely focused on America, and I might have wished for a broader exploration. Though it's barely a critique, because that's just a personal interest and not a failure of his work.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Murphy traces the rise of the data complex in the early twentieth century, a whole industry built to ensure the preservation of records after a disaster... like the end of the world. An industry driven by fear of contamination, decay and death... and how that background has haunted the data complex to this day. What can and will be left behind when we are gone? So many blurred lines between human and machine, biological body and data body, life and digital afterlife.

Why I started this book: I have a history degree and specialized in archives... not where I work currently but I was very intregued by the title.

Why I finished it: Murphy doesn't have a very flattering view of archives and archivists but he wrote an entertaining history of the efforts that individuals and companies have gone to, to preserve a permenment record. And he details a lot of experiemental technologies that are supposed to last. Some that had already failed by the time he published.

[Victoria | · Rating 4 out of 5]

We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World by Brian Michael Murphy is unlike any other Nonfiction book I have read. An absolutely fascinating and philosophical look at data preservation! Immediately, the cover caught my eye. It looks like a 1950s rock album turned apocalyptic and reminded me of Fallout, for my video game lovers out there.

Murphy starts this book off with his experience at the Corbis Film Preservation Facility. Something I did not know, is that CFF is just one of many vaults in Iron Mountain's National Data Center in Boyers, Pennsylvania, but there are currently over 2,600 data centers in the U.S. Some of the data center's clients include Stephen Spielberg, United Airlines, Warner Brothers, HBO, and Nationwide Insurance.

Murphy discusses the term, "Mummy Complex" throughout the book:
"When we preserve, we manifest our Mummy Complex and tell ourselves that no matter what happens in this uncertain world, that no matter who is left alive when a war or economic meltdown or rash of terrorist attacks concludes, a trace of us will remain."
Murphy goes on to say it is not unlike the Egyptains who preserved their organs so that they too, could be used in the afterlife. This is a very philosophical way of looking this topic and that really piqued my interest.

So basically, humans rely on digital infrastructure to preserve, record and redistribute data. Anything from photos, film, books, artifacts, records, etc. Murphy shares many examples of data throughout time. Along with his fantastic writing, he shares some captivating photographs from different archives.
I would reccomend this to anyone interested in a fascinating glimpse in to the past, present, and future of data. A unique and engrossing read!

[Zach Strassburger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very good book, just not the book I ever wanted to be reading. It is smart and thoughtful and I read sections of it out loud to my partner—and yet it took me a full month to get through the dense academic text. It is a rewritten dissertation and is not for the general public. That’s sad since I think it is a fascinating topic. However, I consider myself to be a curious person and I couldn’t manage to maintain interest in this tome. The number of times I checked how many pages left to go was HIGH.
Read this if you are fascinated by the idea of why we care about preserving data and how we do it…but only read this if you also have a high tolerance for long lectures.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free e-copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Dale Dewitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very in depth and entertaining look at the data storage industry. I thought a lot while reading this book in how much data I generate and by the tour that Professor Murphy provides I was astonished both at the history of data collection and storage but also the implications for the future. Well researched and well written.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read if you want to understand not just the history of preserving data, but the history of data itself and its oftentimes harmful effects in our quest to know and remember everything.

[Matt McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the material roots of our contemporary data complex, which it turns out, isn't all that contemporary.

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy.

A fascinating academic study both of how data is collected now and how data collection has evolved over the past century, with a heavy emphasis on the fears and anxieties of the Cold War.

[Kelsey Weekman · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh no i'm so sorry this wasn't for me. i am not the specialist they are targeting. DNF