L'invention de la memoire: Ecrire, enregistrer, numeriser [The invention of memory: writing, recording, digitizing]

摘要

In his preface to this lengthy book, Yves Quire, a French physicist, describes the history of memories and recording as it is recounted in L'invention de la memoire as a continuous fresco that starts with the genome ... and leads us to the conservation of big data and the evocation of memories of the future, after having depicted an amazing gallery of inventors, processes, apparatuses, writing systems, materials, etc., which have enabled people to preserve the trace of knowledge as they acquired it. There was a high risk here of submerging the reader in this flow. This risk is entirely avoided thanks to the approach selected: that of the story. All these chapters can be read as one reads a story, with its heroes, successes, failures, anecdotes and myths [p. 7, our translation].