The Fight To Save Cultural Memory With Charles Henry

Adam  00:00

Today in This Anthro Life, we take a dive into the digital world exploring how we grapple with unprecedented cultural and climate changes. I'm Adam Gamwell, well, what if the same technology that immerses us in cat videos and memes could also help us preserve global cultural heritage? Imagine a digital library like no other spending across countries, cultures, and even crises that contains videos of folk dances, audio of local dialects, and digital representations of ancient parchments in 3d scans of clothing and tools. That's the brainchild of our guest today, Charles J. Henry who heads the Council of Library and Information Resources. Charles is a master of merging culture and technology navigating complications and challenges. But this isn't just a story about building a high-tech fortress of cultural wisdom. It's about resilience, collaboration, and what it truly means to safeguard our shared cultural memory in an age of climate crisis. Now join us as we delve into the fascinating journey of Charles who seamlessly fuses ancient heritage with the digital world in the quest to preserve and protect our stories for all of humanity. Now, this episode may seem familiar to longtime THL fans, and I'm really happy to point out that you can now watch the episode unfold visually too, if you're on YouTube. That's right. This fan-favorite video originally launched as audio-only is now available in video format as well. Speaking of preserving cultural heritage, like as here's an example. So dive on in and experience the blend of heritage and technology like never before in this afterlife. Thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast, Charles on this afterlife, it's really a great pleasure to have you, I'm super excited to hear both of your stories and then kind of dig into some of the issues around the idea of the preservation of cultural memory. But first, I just wanted to say thanks for joining us in the program, and hope you're well today.

Charles  01:37

Oh, that's it's a real privilege to be here, Adam, and thank you for the invitation. So

Adam  01:44

to kind of kick things off, one of the things I like to do on the show is kind of get a sense of, you know, your own kind of superhero origin story and how you found your way into the world of thinking through the idea of libraries and digital information and, and how you came across. Did it find yourself into this super fascinating world?

Charles  02:05

Oh, yeah, it's, I am a comparative literature, let's say a lapsed Comparative Literature scholar. I have my doctorate from Columbia. And at a focus then on classical and medieval epics, for the most part. And this was back in a long time ago back in the 80s. And the job market was very tight. And I had been working in libraries all my life and was some kind of a library rat, and was fascinated by the idea of the library, certainly, and the way that libraries were used in my scholarship, and those of my colleagues. This was about the time that personal computers and digital technology were just starting to more than percolate, it was starting to rage. And so there was all this interesting and confusion, skepticism, and hope about what this new digital technology might bring to scholarship and higher education in in general. So I, because of the limited, you know, the limited opportunities to teach wasn't such a bad thing. And I had the opportunity to take a job running the largest library at Columbia University at the time, Butler, which is a humanities history library. And that was sets when I really got hooked on the juxtaposition of, you know, millennia of analog cultural heritage and this new wild frontier of, of digital technology, and how the two could coexist, how the two could complement one another. What were some of the advantages and disadvantages of this, of these, this new medium. And so I just jumped in and never looked back, and was fortunate to work in some very forward looking institutions, and ended up at the Council of library and Information Resources about a little lab up 13 years ago. And the council is a it's a, it's a neutral body. It's a largely of re-granting institution. And it allows for my staff and I to get involved across literally hundreds of institutions, hundreds of projects, and we're still wrestling with the confluence of digital technology and our analog cultural heritage, and it's great. It's been a great ride, as they say,

Adam  04:48

now, right on I'm going to ask a dumb question is part of this, because I think it's really interesting to think about, on one level, what kind of the work of of like the council does and so A part of it, you mentioned that it's it's wrestling with basically our digital heritage, right? What does it mean to transfer and and translate cultural knowledge information that came before into into new formats. But also you noted that you It's you work largely as a re granting agency. And so I know for a lot of our listeners that may be either in academia or kind of right outside of it, grants are always a huge part of how we think about projects and how we are able to, you know, find funding to do independent projects, or research or work with, you know, work with an organization work with a university like Columbia. So can you tell us a little bit about this? Like, what is a, how does the council work as a rebranding agency in terms of our other organizations applying for for projects and research in that, then you sponsor and work with them? Or how does that work?

Charles  05:43

Yeah, that's basically how it works. It's mostly at an institutional level, as opposed to an individual level, what we do, I'll give you a specific example, one of our larger projects right now is called digitizing hidden collections. And this is a North American project and involves Canadian institutions and those from America. And we work largely in what's called the glam community, which is galleries and libraries, and archives, and museums, cool name, and great, great books. And what we do is, we build communities, we build communities. So I'd like to say a practice and a purpose. So we take what would otherwise be, say, a, an individual project at a certain college or a certain university. And it is put into the context of a larger international grant program that we manage. And that does a number of things. It allows for these individual schools and their their staff to manage projects within a network of expertise. So instead of working alone, in you know, at night and off hours, digitizing Special Collections, there's a real robust community of an hundreds of people now who have either done this or are doing it. And there's a lot of expertise, there's a lot of shared knowledge, that's important, it creates greater efficiencies, and a greater effectiveness. And it also helps to establish more kinds of standardize practices and procedures. So what we do in this case, that so many institutions in North America have just extraordinary collections. And these collections can be photographs that can be maps, it can be archives, and newspapers, certainly, books, and such, many institutions. And this, and this includes even institutions that are that are wealthier than others, often don't have the financial backing to make these collections, which are often on catalogue and certainly not digitized, make them available to the public, as a public good. And so that's what we do. And we work closely with the Mellon Foundation, Sloan Foundation, and we bring in on often several million dollars a year that we then regrab, to these institutions, in order to inculcate this sense of community in this sense of purpose. So we're reaching, we're actually extending the reach of these major foundations into institutions and regions that they otherwise would probably not get involved with. That

Adam  08:36

that's, that's very helpful to think about, too. Because oftentimes, you know, folks may hear, you know, hear of Flynn Foundation, right? Or you know, her and then think about, Okay, what does it mean to find, you know, grants and works in that space, but also recognizing that they only work in so many directions. Right. So I think I think what you're describing here is, is a really important space to think about, what is this in this? Because I think re granting is this area? That is it might be familiar to some, but I think that a lot of a lot of folks that maybe even work in this space are not as familiar with, and understanding what does it mean to extend the reach of philanthropic organizations and also help them get into other areas? So we need this kind of some kind of specialty directionality?

Charles  09:15

Yeah, yeah. I it also, we've been managing the digitizing hidden collections project for several years now. And prior to that, we had a cataloging of hidden collections. All of this work brings these these rare and special materials to the light of day, and the the access then is sustained over time. So you're, you're building a collective, a kind of Commons, of rare and valuable material that otherwise would be probably still still obscured. Right.

Adam  09:53

And I mean, that I think is such an important piece too, because, you know, the, the metaphor that I'm thinking of that you probably also get all the time is the the Library of Alexandria is challenged, right in terms of being the repository of physical knowledge that can then be wiped out if there's a natural disaster or fire or something. Exactly. And then the cultural heritage that's lost in that regard. So this seems like incredibly important work. And also understanding, right, we have a global network of scholarship and the information now, but oftentimes, I suspect that there's actually just a vast amount that has never been digitized, right, that has not been put out for an easier kind of Commons access. And so the work is still ahead of us, I think, is that correct? Or have we done a good job? Or we got a lot more to do?

Charles  10:34

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we're not I mean, it's, we have a program a similar re granting program for recordings at risk. And these are audio visual materials that are have become with a softened, called sticky and the chemical components of of the tape, or the media has, has begun to separate and these are, this could be the only copy, let's say, have gone with the wind, or, or other kinds of perhaps less dramatic, but but also very important kinds of, of information, cultural, cultural representation, cultural expressions, we have done this, our grants are around $50,000. And we've probably laid out several million at this point, the scale of this project is upwards of 20 billion, billion dollars. So you know, everyone tries when you make it, we make a stab at trying to address this, but the scale is very hard to grasp the fragility of our legacy. Now, that's

Adam  11:43

a both beautifully, like sad, but also highlighting the danger of this to read that there's this. There's a beautiful fragility to this. And so if I may give myself one more dumb question in this regard, in terms of like, helping folks think about it, you know, we're talking about like, Hey, I love the idea of the glam as as the as a consortium of groups, right? And galleries. And I say it against those classes, galleries, its libraries, archives,

Charles  12:08

and museums, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Yeah, glance at that damn community.

Adam  12:16

It's got a great visual already to it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I think that's a part of it too. Even even thinking about this, right? So there is this importance of actually facilitating communication between different kinds of institutions. And so it seems like that's, that's like, one of the big elements of the council's work is to take a lot of independent groups that may or may not communicate with each other on a regular basis. And certainly, you know, I don't know what they're talking about collection sharing. So tell me a bit about that work. I think that's really interesting to have, how do we do coalition and network building across institutions? On this part of the council? You

Charles  12:45

know, that's, that's a great question. And I think, when you talk about building networks of people, usually not and, and, and, you know, we all say this is, this is a good thing. And it's like you to terms like innovation, everybody nods and says, Oh, that's a good thing. These are extraordinarily difficult phenomena. And the, we do the network building as much as we can through the process of re granting and, and webinars and seminars and such. And the, we have a one quick example, we have a postdoctoral program in data curation, and that has been going on for probably eight years or more now. And they, their postdocs had just finished their PhD in a particular discipline. And they'll go to an institution and work on data in that field of study. We have representatives now of 23, different disciplines, sciences, social sciences, humanities. And that's an example of a network. So we have hundreds of alums from this project, each has are his special field of of research. So we're able to look at building networks, one where there's a common interest in data curation, which is a very complicated, the tricky kind of challenge these days. But it's also allows us to see, you know, what's different between saving data preserving data in the climatological studies AND, and OR it compared to medieval manuscripts like the Romanello, rose and all of its manifestations. They're all data, people think of data is like ones and zeros and numbers, but it's all data. And it's all in many cases, a mess. And so we're trying to bring some coherence and cohesion to, to these processes. So that's an example of, of networking across disciplines and across different fields. With both similarities and distinctions involved, one of the real challenges of network Building are the kinds of impediments that higher education actually imposes on creating networks and creating collaborations through collaborations. And when you look across the board of the 1000s, of colleges and universities that that, that we have in the US, and that many of us work with on a daily basis, these schools are wonderful. Their mission is, you know, noble, their vision is, is often profound. But they're also institutions that are competing with one another constantly, they compete for money, they compete for faculty, compete for grants and compete students. And it's this kind of inherent traditional competition between institutions and organizations that really can impede real networking can impede a real kind of interdependence. that so much of the rhetoric and so much of the raison d'etre of of these schools is to, you know, and in some cases rise above the rest and be distinct and relish in, you know, in the, the secrecy of, of the institution. That's all cool. And we know, that's important, but it at the level of what we're trying to do, it makes life a lot more complicated.

Adam  16:27

Yeah. And that makes good sense to, and I'm even just reflecting on my own graduate experience, and then talking with colleagues that are doing postdocs now, for example, or folks that work in academia, or work in the industry, and then do partnerships with academia to you know, across across fields, in in that brings true right, that is actually one of the big challenges is, if we are to be institutions of higher learning and higher education, what does it mean to uphold that mission? But at the same time, like you do have also, I mean, I'll sound vulgar here, but like a business to run, right? Oh, yeah, that's part of it. So think through, you know, Oh,

Charles  17:00

yeah. And it's my work that my organization just did a, we were involved in our was like, every five years. Strategic Plan, you know, we're at a strategic plan. And this time was really interesting, because of the pandemic, the COVID disruption, and of course, climate change, which hangs over so much of increasingly hangs over what we do so the the idea of creating a strategy that you could follow closely for five years, let alone two years or three. Is is it that that's, that doesn't work, it doesn't work today. And looking at the process of strategic plans, that goes back, the mission statements, the strategies division, basically, most all of that goes back to the 1970s in business. And our the name Peter Drucker I'm sure means a lot to you, and and others of us and, you know, Peter Drucker was really helped create this, I would say, culture of strategy and mission. And, and the, you know, academe, the higher education picked it up, and we have run with it ever since. But if you look at these, a look at strategic, most strategic plans, they're often quite similar. And it's often difficult to, if you kind of did a, you know, a little mental experiment and block the name of the institution and read, you know, I did this and I don't recommend anyone doing it at about 50 of these statements. It was really difficult to determine what kind of institution was represented by these statements, and almost impossible to determine what institution itself was saying this because they were generic. And so I think this is you don't get an end. There's all kinds of ironies here. But in the statements, the terms a growth was there, and high achievements and innovation and new ways of thinking those terms were very common. What you didn't, I didn't find in any of these was we want to become more in the interdependent with other schools. We want to loosen our identity a bit in order to collaborate more effectively and efficiently. You just don't get it. And I you know, it's an I don't mean to be glib, but the process itself of strategic determination causes difficulties to solve complex problems. Now,

Adam  19:56

that makes that makes a great sense too, because once you're kind of working at a warehouse correct level of creating the barriers or pathways when they can become walls, right in which then you get stuck in a silo? Yep. Well, I mean, to your point, too, yeah, the things that I mean, that's one of the great challenges of our time, right, is that how do we de silo, our systems of knowledge and then also exactly, actualities of interdependence. So I think that's, that's a really great. I mean, there's two things that that you've mentioned so far, that I think are really interesting challenges to this point around like actually recognizing interdependence. And in like, recognizing what might be some ways that we actually can critically evaluate the barriers that we've ultimately put up, one of which is, which I love this example, what does in a European illuminated manuscript share in common with climatological data. And the second is actually about the the looming global challenge of climate change, as a threat to how we can keep these these data alive, in essence, right, along with ourselves, you know, both these points give us a methodological challenge. But in existential one, two, in terms of what is an independent interdependence, like, what does interdependence actually mean today? And how is it challenging some of these like, strategic thinking frameworks that have indeed set business up to run a certain way, but obviously, we live in a different time? Almost a different planet at this point, right, you know, 50 years later? Oh, yeah. And that's a really interesting challenge that we're facing.

Charles  21:20

Yes, it is. Yeah. And we're not, you know, we're not really well, we we've, I think, been entrenched for so long, it's hard to get out of the way that we have been doing business. And I think that's, that makes the climate disruption and these other disruptive forces that much more urgent, I guess, at this point.

Adam  21:41

Yeah, I think I think 100% correct there. And so let's talk a little bit about that. So I think that this is, I think one of the more intriguing questions that more and more institutions, individuals, like organizations are going to need to be facing in the future is, you know, how do we deal with this larger existential threat? And so one of the, one of the elements I'm encouraged to talk to you about is like, how do we think about the fact that climate change, like poses one of the biggest threats that we have to our to our cultural memory as humanity, but also as as cultures and institutions and organizations to? How do we, how do we think about that? Like, how do you how do you approach that, that problem through your work? Well, I

Charles  22:16

think if you look at I've, I've come to, I guess kind of mentally migrate from climate change to climate crisis, I just think it's, it may be some, in fact, anthropologists can call it the the most dire existential crisis our species has ever confronted. And there's probably a good deal of truth to that. So and from our, from clears perspective, from an information knowledge management, cultural heritage perspective, what is this? What are aspects of this crisis, and one is the loss of habitable spaces on this planet. And the that loss, it can entail a number of very disruptive, disruptive and dire consequences. One is the loss of home and the act of the Aspera, of potentially 10s to hundreds of millions of people moving into losing their home and moving into other parts of the world that are unfamiliar, and perhaps inhospitable to them. There's also the the physical threat of of climate, global climate change, and the effects of flooding and drought and fire and desertification, it's estimated that probably as much as 98%, of cultural heritage institutions on this planet will be affected in some way. by climate change. No one escapes this, no matter where you are, or how wealthy you are, something is going to disrupt you and your collections, whether it's rising sea water, whether it's the encroaching desert, in certain parts of the world, wildfires, you know, and even the change of insects, and that can destroy material culture, an increase of, of non native species of insects, and the the warming of areas that have not traditionally had air conditioning. That's a huge problem for collections, particularly books and paper based media. So you know, from the catastrophic sea rises to a hotter summer, where you don't have wherewithal to cool your collections. This is just pervasive. And again, we are, we're all touched by it. And the loss that this could entail of physical culture is again very hard to grasp with the diaspora of people. You then Lose from an anthropological perspective, I would say, the more ephemeral aspects of culture, theater performance, Saul ritual, that religious community acts that have been practiced for sometimes hundreds to 1000s of years, the loss of, of particular language, or languages themselves. So it just is from one person, some perspective, just unrelenting. And the last piece of this, the last part of the crisis goes back to what we've been talking a bit about this afternoon. And that seems to me, it's important to acknowledge how difficult it is for us, as human beings to work together at at a large scale. And we've known about climate change since Jim Hanson gave his report decades and decades ago to Congress, we've known about this. And there has been precious little action. And the problem is, in part, I think cognitive that we are, I don't know how to put it, but we are, it's difficult, and we may not be too well equipped to truly work together on a scale that can address the problem of this enormity. And that that is so we're not only causing probably caused this crisis, but we are at a disadvantage to solving it, I would say that's part of, of the ravages of climate change, it seems to me.

Adam  26:36

Yeah. No, thank you for sharing that that mean, that's a such an important way to think through the issues that we're having. And I think, you know, as we begin, if somebody hears the idea of a climate crisis, right, we tend to jump where you began to actually in terms of maybe loss of home and flooding in sort of environmental quote, unquote, or, you know, spatial, the big concerns. And that can lead to things like diaspora and movement, obviously, in places themselves may get more hostile as more people need to find refuge. But then you raises other interesting point, too, that we are, this means things like having to have more air conditioning in buildings that we didn't have to use as much before it changed the way that we've been thinking about, you know, the humidity or not an area of collections, which can affect both physical materials, if you have a bunch of wooden artifacts back and affect digital too, if it suddenly becomes very humid, like it could mess with a computer, right? And oh, yes. Now, you know, how we have not, you know, it's like realizing that we need to put all those pieces together, like does just also kind of underscore the enormity of the challenge. But I also think you're right that like that, there is kind of a cognitive limitation. I mean, it makes me think of, there's the phenomenon known as Dunbar's number, right? That every humans are kind of mentally cognitively equipped to know, personally about 150 other individuals. And that's kind of the extent at which we can then have a network of social people that we can count upon, and that we can know. But obviously, right, we have the technology now, like Facebook, or pick a social media thing to see, literally millions of people have no followers or community members that we've never met is this challenge. Because this I think about this in context with there's another social science taker called Benedict Anderson that came up with this concept of the imagined community. And it was oh, yeah, it's really about how we develop the idea of the nation state through things like newspapers and mass media, and they something that we all shared, that we never had to have before. And so it's interesting to think through what are the tools which actually have been tools of material culture, newspapers, and radio and and a lot of maths broadcast as the ways of saying, Here's what it means to be an American or a Canadian, right? Or a Mexican use these kinds of these tools of actual cultural building, essentially, because some of them are materials, some of them to your point are ephemeral, right? How do we act? And how are we told to act in certain places? And so it is interesting to think about how we're going to run up to these kinds of challenges going forward, when it's a question of what can we fall back on? And what do we have to invent, to go forward? You know, knowing I think, the rightfully so right, that we have a bit of a cognitive limitation in terms of how we can think of working as a group, right, working as a as what is what is humanity as a whole while preserving difference? You know? Yeah, I mean, one part, I'm curious, your thought about this, too, is you've kind of talked elsewhere before about the idea of that the power of narrative and storytelling as ways of helping us kind of preserve, think through the participatory nature, like adding some coherence to dealing with change. Like, I want to hear your thoughts on this. And are there other tools kind of in your, in your quiver, as it were, that we might pull out to think about what how do we how do we begin to address this issue? You

Charles  29:39

know, going back to us, us as a as a species. We are inveterate storytellers and stories have occupied us before history, literally. And we can we've been telling each other stories for for probably hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of years. When you If you look at and I don't want to be too abstract here, but we'll go back to social media. And I remember you knew in the decade ago or 15 years ago with the rise of some of these, some of these platforms, and there was a great sense of oh, well, I'll be brought together will be one community, you know, we can share stories, but the way that's worked has been more, I think, divisive than cohering. And part of that is that the stories, they're very small stories, they're kind of personal stories, they're very individualistic narratives, if you will. And that kind of storytelling tends to fragment communities, I think, and it is not, it's not a means to bring cultures together as societies together. So I think that, you know, some of the most important technical advances and discoveries of the last 20 years actually have stories as their basis, but it's, it's the kind of storytelling that does not conduce to large scale action, and in fact, seems to very much conduce to polarization, and fragmentation. So storytelling as a concept, let's say, can be very positive, but it also can be disruptive and, and a negative. A story I would use, as an example of the positive side for this for this talk is the Digital Library, the Middle East. And this was, we started this with a number of other organizations about maybe seven to eight years ago. And the impetus for the digital era, the Middle East was the, in those days, the just vicious destructive attacks by ISIS, also called Dinesh in the Middle East. And we all remember, I think, daily newscasts where libraries were burned, and mosques were burned, and synagogues were burned and statues were were blown up. And the assault on these communities by ISIS was very much a a cultural assault, as well as a physical kind of assault. So we got together, a group of us got together trying to figure out, what could we do, you know, we do not bear arms, and we don't have blue helmets, and how do we, how might we address this. And we decided that a digital library was perhaps a means to not to resolve these problems, but to maybe give somewhat more hope for the future, that what exists now can be preserved digitally. And if it is destroyed, you would still have a record of it a good record a high resolution record that, that that could be used. And so we began to work with, I think, over 100 institutions, in America, in Europe, and as importantly, or, more importantly, in the, in the Middle East. And what was good about this was that was the story, you know, we can't we're not going to solve this. But we made we made blunt the impact of this violence and blunt the impact of, of this loss if we work together. And to me, one of the more interesting aspects of of this project was that it was digital. And we would have these kinds of thought thought experiments that if you went to the Middle East, and there was, say, a gathering of representatives from 10 to 15 different countries, they're all most of whip, most of them under under serious threat at the time. And you said we have a really large amount of money. And we'd like to build a brick and mortar library somewhere to safeguard in house all these these treasures, these cultural treasures that are under threat it I think it fair to say that no one would ever agree on where that would go. And for all kinds of understandable reasons. But the fact that it was a digital library gave it a neutrality and a kind of dis diffuse, but shared space where everyone could contribute. Those who contributed were still responsible for their resources, but those surrogates those digital surrogates would live on. And they could be sustained beyond local politics and beyond the local threat. So that that story worked. I think it worked pretty well. And we ISIS is now very much receding in recession. I guess the threats are still there, and they're now becoming increasingly climate threats as opposed to political and military threats. But the same story holds. You know, we're not nobody's nobody's coming in and saving the day here but working collectively can begin And to help preserve and make accessible these, these wonderful resources, that to me that sort of epitomizes a distinction anyway, between an analog culture and a digital culture. And there is a, there's an aspect here, and I call it digital diplomacy. And we have been working a bit with the State Department in the US on this, that more and more these kinds of digital responses to crises are more easily acceptable and understandable. And the prospect of moving some forms of diplomacy into the kind of digital realm is intriguing. And something that we're we're trying to help to pursue that as well. Oh,

Adam  35:43

that's fascinating. It makes it makes good sense to because there is, you know, both from what you're saying. And then just other things that we've seen that there is a semblance of neutrality in like how you put the kind of this diffuse shared space of the digital in that it's no one person owns it. And then thankfully, with the connection of the internet and in the interconnectivity of different services, and technologies, that it also doesn't live in one place. And so meaning even to that if something happens in one area to one server farm, it's not necessarily affecting another one elsewhere. And so I think that's a really interesting idea. And then, yeah, what this means for the question of digital diplomacy, I think is a really fascinating, yeah, forward thinking question, too, in terms of how do we, how do we tap into the structures of power that have the capacity, right, and legal recourse to then also put in place international standards, or policies that would then require certain kinds of, you know, collections or recommendations or, you know, the way that we kind of interoperate? I think there are some interesting questions there that, hey, I applaud, but sounds like a huge challenge. Move the State Department in this direction, but I think but I think that's a great and brilliant insight in terms of what we can do with this in terms of how we can tell that story. And then what we can do with it, if we work in pull the levers of power, that are also the ones that are best positioned to help us also continue to connect right,

Charles  37:04

rather than divide, right? Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Adam  37:08

I mean, one thing with that, too, I'm curious about is you, you noted that as we are trying to build this interconnectivity space, you know, and the one of the other the other elements of clear itself is that you work on the idea of helping create standards that can work interoperability across different contexts. I think this is all something else that seems increasingly important to, especially as we, you know, think about right, if we're working interculturally, if we're working with some groups that are under threat and different levels than another than other another group might be, how do we kind of balance? power differentials? And so I'm curious. I mean, it sounds like a very bland question, right. But like, in your in your experience, to what is the role of having these kinds of standards, and helping kind of make up, you know, whether it's a policy idea, or just in terms of how we collect and share images in terms of making them accessible? In that that element of being for the commons?

Charles  37:53

Oh, yeah. It's a great question. Uh, one response is that there, there is now a global organization called its triple AI app and fight and get my eyes correct. It's the international image interoperability framework. And it's worth it's worth looking at. And this started is Miss kind of a small beer operation so many years ago, and now has a very large and vibrant international community that contributes to its platform all the time. Essentially, what it allows is for images, and now and, and more recently, texts, and other kinds of cultural objects, that no matter what the, the metadata or the cataloging scheme, or the Scripture description is, you drop it into triple if, and it becomes available internationally. And it's very simple. It's elegant, but it's, it's one of these, to me, it's just exemplary of the kind of efficiency and I'd say celebration of sharing cultural heritage, across regions and across societies, different parts of the world, using a platform that is, let's say, agnostic, and just really accepts anything, and you can drop it in. And it's, it's like the Switzerland of images, I guess. It's just neutral and, and it's become beloved, and I use that term advisedly. But this is a way that you can make your culture and your heritage known in a way that is frankly inexpensive, and and quite vibrant. And the a lot of the research that's done then is to create applications and tools that allow you and me to be able to use these beautiful images across different different many different countries, many different languages, many different projects in a way that we could never do that before. And so That's, to me, again, I think triple F is a kind of proof of concept of what you can do when you really, you know, attack of a wicked, a wicked problem at a community, literally, of hundreds of, of technical people and managers and librarians and archivists were needed to help resolve.

Adam  40:23

That sounds fascinating, too. And this is, I mean, this is like, you know, scratching my, my nerd itch in terms of that has always been this interesting question. I mean, I'm coming from the field of anthropology. But regardless of the field itself, I mean, one of the issues that we would always discuss back in the day, and then that I still think is an issue. So I'm actually where I'm really excited to talk with you here is to ask the question of if we're having these kinds of standards, and we're able to bring together all forms of kind of human cultural data. Obviously, it's an ongoing work project, but like, are there other ways that we can make that you know, that in terms of accessibility and searchability, for addressing actually some of these, like, Planet level issues we have with climate, the climate crisis? And, you know, whether it is finding stories of indigenous Peruvian farmers that have worked with like, drought ridden conditions for hundreds of years? How have they done this right? And what stories do we have? Or have we seen, you know, the Americans, plains, Indians, Indians and Native Americans working across different forms of agricultural production? Or, you know, are any of these different kinds of elements? And it makes me wonder, too, in terms of what are the possibilities, I guess, I guess, I'm hopeful that there are ways that we can also think about this in terms of cultural heritage. But this is also our collective problem solving, I guess, is the way I'm thinking about this, too. And how can we tap into that?

Charles  41:34

I think that I really liked that. And it's a when you look at a platform, let's say, not just as a place to display information, but a place that makes helps to make decisions, informed decisions. A platform or let's say, more accurately, a digital environment that has more almost an that. Again, this is a little on the edge, perhaps. But it's, it's organized in more in a biological way, in organic way than just in the traditional bits and bytes. One an environment where information flows freely across that you can combine and recombine all kinds of data and information and images and predictions in ways that are very, very difficult to do. Now, if you look at these kinds of techno technological constructs more as representing cognitive processes, as opposed to arithmetic and algorithmic processes, I think we would get closer to mimicking not only ourselves, but what we need, or let's say even our better nature in ways to address these, these problems that we don't have. Now, a footnote to this isn't so much of in climate change in the climate crisis, so much of the science is understandably locked up in various journals. And this goes back to your observation about silos. So the probably the most important medium of scientific information pertaining to climate change is behind a firewall, or firewalls, plural, and is rather expensive, and most, most people can't access it. And so again, we were confronted with a kind of existential infrastructure challenge, that the means that are our most effective means of production and dissemination are in certain respects, extraordinarily limiting, and potentially self defeating. And that that's, we need to wrestle with this. I

Adam  43:57

agree to a I love this description too, in terms of thinking about how do we rethink what it is that technology is doing one platforms not as as like repositories for just showing something off right but actually has arenas in which they can help us make better decisions that we can think through together? And then yeah, what is the correlation and accessibility of knowledge as part of those two in terms of can we can they be as organic as cultural culture actually is right? There are no actual borders and culture right? We define them. Yeah. But you know, how we interact with one another is how we make culture and even just this, it's existential infrastructure point, I think is super interesting. I was just talking with some some friends the other day, that you know, nature, one of the most prestigious biology magazines or journals, peer reviewed journals out there is now offering open access for anybody if you pay $12,000 Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, think about that, right? Because that's like most most postdocs are like a lab. A pie is not going to have that kind of extra money from a grant to make it open access. And so it's self defeating to your exact point, right. Some of the most important knowledge we need to get we can't get out to the public for For paywalls like this a literal paywall of $12,000

Charles  45:03

Oh, yeah, though in my day that that's that that was more than I made as a research assistant. So I mean, it was beyond beyond the pale as they say, Indeed,

Adam  45:13

indeed. Right. But I think I think this is this is actually a really, really wonderful point that I think is worth wrestling on. We we have to have a second conversation following up to think through this also, because there's, there's so much here that this has been an extremely wonderful to talk with you. You've opened up a lot of doors in my head to to think with here, is there is there anything that we haven't talked about so far, that's kind of on your on your mind that you want to make sure we can get the good people to hear about, I definitely want to send folks over to the website and checkout clear and see all the great work that you're doing to have the shownotes Wilson links in there. But anything else that's kind of that we've really stirred up that that's kind of on your mind, or that you want to make sure people know. No,

Charles  45:45

I think this has been a really provocative and and I think a lovely conversation from from my perspective, Adam, and I really appreciate, again, the invitation to talk. I think we've covered a lot of the the major issues and the major challenges. And you know, my only salutary comment would be that we do seriously honestly need to work together to address the world in which we find ourselves. And I hope we can do that. Amen

Adam  46:14

to that. As we wrap up today's conversation with Charles Henry, I'd like to articulate why this interaction was so profound. It has unveiled how digital information operates to bridge knowledge and how it can transform the future of cultural heritage preservation. And if that wasn't impactful enough, we delved into the inherent issues of climate crisis as a significant threat to our cultural heritage, a real challenge that requires us to rethink collective problem solving in interdependence. So I want to give a special thank you to Charles Henry for his insightful contributions. So I hope as listeners and watchers that you've been inspired to consider how we could blend the traditional avenues of knowledge with the cutting edge of technology to build a future that preserves the past. This has me thinking a lot about how can we use technology to make the inaccessible accessible, and so I'd love to hear from you about this too. So go ahead and send me your answers and your thoughts, either on substack. You can comment on YouTube, you can send something through social media or get in touch on the website. Your answers and ideas are all part of this journey too. So I'm grateful for your continued support and engagement. And if you're curious and want to delve deeper into the subject matter of this episode, make sure to check out the clear website which is linked in show notes. And of course, share your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. I really do value your contributions. And finally, if you haven't already, remember to subscribe to the podcast. And if you know someone that would get something out of this episode, please go ahead and share it with them. That is one of the best ways to help us grow our community. Together, we can shape the future of this afterlife. So until next time, stay curious, stay open, keep being inspired. I'm Adam getwell. And we'll see you next time