Archiving Machines
From Punch Cards to Platforms
Published on 11. November 2025
258 pages
978-0-262-38457-5 (ISBN)
Description
The story of the rise of networked data through the evolution of archiving and digital storage.
2026 PROSE Award Winner: Computing and Information Sciences
Archiving Machines advances our understanding of memory, information, and data by charting 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. Amelia 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.
2026 PROSE Award Winner: Computing and Information Sciences
Archiving Machines advances our understanding of memory, information, and data by charting 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. Amelia 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.
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11/2025
MIT Press
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Amelia Acker is Associate Professor in the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Her research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
