Amelia Acker, "Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms" (MIT Press, 2025)

About this episode

Dr. Amelia Acker discusses her book on the evolution of data archiving technologies and their cultural implications.

We're so pleased to welcome Dr. Amelia Acker, author of Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms (MIT Press, 2025) to the New Books Network! This book describes the struggle between the computing technologies that archive data and the cultures of information that have led to platforms that assert control over its use. Acker examines the origins of data archives and the computing processes of storage, exchange, and transmission. Each chapter introduces data archiving processes that relate to the evolution of data sovereignty we experience today: from magnetic tape and timesharing computer models from the 1950s, to the establishment of data banks and the rise of database processing and managed data silos in the 1970s, to file structures and virtual containers in cloud-based information services over the past 40 years. Your host is Dr. Adam Kriesberg, Associate Professor at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Adam Kriesberg

Guest: Dr. Amelia Acker

Topics covered

• data archiving
• computing technologies
• information culture
• data sovereignty
• history of data storage

Keywords

• data archives
• computing processes
• magnetic tape
• database processing
• cloud-based information services

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: MIT Press

Books & works: Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms

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