Memory Practices in the Sciences (Inside Technology)
"A brilliant and subtle analysis that uncovers and explains how conventions of naming, classifying, recording, and remembering create and preserve human knowledge. This book is required reading for all who do science or want to understand it -- a real tour de force."--John Leslie King, Dean and Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan"Bowker offers a playful and richly textured look at the way we maintain records of the past and the multitude of purposes such memory practices can serve in the present. In so doing he reminds readers that the context in which we record the past shapes the stories we can tell."Stephanie YoungHistorical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences"Every reader will find much to ponder in this provocative exploration of the relationship of the present to the past."Jean AlexanderCollege and Research Libraries"An elegantly crafted meditation on a series of historical horizons of memory machines. Social statistics, geological processes, cybernetics, databases, and biodiversity each became master models of and models for their times, recommencing and recommanding what is to be remembered, forgotten, or deemed irrelevant. And yet, Bowker concludes, all knowledge is nonetheless local, and utopian claims to universality, while constructing irreversible infrastructures, nonetheless cannot contain all that is needed for their own maintenance or our human mindful lives. Written with erudition and humor, this is a brilliant exploration of the aporia of our arkhe and archives."--Michael M.J. Fischer, MIT, author of *Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice*Please note: Arrived too late to appear on book jacket.