Future Archeology: Consider Survival in a Jammed Digital Space

    Recently, I encountered a book titled Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies written by Sean Cubitt in 2017. A few pages of reading his Energy chapter stimulates my thoughts for this post. He describes the fact that our online activities and the use of many digital platforms such as Google, YouTube, Twitter supported by the remote data centers and cloud computing techniques have been energy-intensive and thus ecologically hostile (each Google search emits 0.2 grams of co2, e.g.). One thing that especially catches my eye is that he states that the power cut event is instructive ( we would immediately recall the Texas power cut this year), in a way that it reminds us how profound we, as well as our devices that are critical to our routine lives, have been dependent on electricity. Without electricity, future archeologists will not be able to understand any of our digital language or practices because they cannot start the devices. 

    His few points make me think about how our taken-for-granted concept of progress (that technology can promise infinite development, that progress is linear, etc.) have shaped our thinking and application of digital archeology. While we are excited about the digital future of archeology, we seem to pay less attention to the issue of archeology going digital per se. According to Cubitt, energy is finite. This is not only because that energy is subjected to the law of physics (entropy), but also, I would add, to the finite capacity of the planet to absorb and dispense heat generated by energy emission. It is not insane to imagine (as this is already presented in the Japanese film Survival Family) that at some point the Earth or the Universe would go mad and humans lose electricity and magnetic power to use any digital and electronic devices. In a continuously degrading ecological environment, humans in the future might have to compete for the use of digital space within the limits of energy use and emission. And this hypothesis could pose challenging questions to the current and future digital archeology development. Since our political-economic pursuits are progress-led (provided it remains unchanged at the time), will the archeology be considered secondary and less important and thus deserve less digital resources since it is about preserving the past rather than looking to the future? Will the archeology be "sacrificed" to leave space to more routine (such as communications) and more urgent (such as sustainable planning) and more advanced (space exploration) needs? How could digital archeology prepare for a competitive digital landscape in the future? Please feel free to point out any problems with my hypothesis and questions.