Yesterday's NYT ran an article titled "From School Files of an Earlier Era, Faces Looking to the Future," about a collector who grabbed a few handfuls of documents that were to be discarded in 1996. The papers that the collector saved from destruction were mundane enough, report card folders from a woman's vocational school in NYC from the 1910s to the 1930s. Very interesting to see the amount of detail and candid, often judgmental comments that were entered into these dossiers. An interesting article in many respects.
The saved folders offer an interesting glimpse into the world of the past. A world of everything analog, and so many technologies barely evolved, if at all. A much more personal world, as evidenced by the copious amounts of information these folders contained: comments about the womans' appearance, personal hygiene, and stickers indicating race. Analog information, type- or handwritten, and accessible to anyone holding the folder. Also information that has for the most part, fallen out of favor (at the minimum) in the time that has passed.
Today, information collection is mostly about numbers, focused less on personal hygiene and more on a subject's bank account and credit rating. The collecting and dissemination of personal information today is behind-the-scenes and often relayed in cryptic codes. Any sane commenter today would be concerned with liability issues. And, of course, laws have been passed making the collection of some of this information illegal.
Growing up in the last vestiges of the analog age, it was often pointed out to me during my school days, that any trouble or problems I might create would swiftly be added to my "permanent record" which would be following me around the rest of my life. I remember as a kid that was a serious concern. And what I imagined that permanent record looking like is a lot like the folders in this article...
There are advantages in my mind to being the age whose lifetime spans the analog/ digital transition, in that remarkably little from the past made the transition to digital. Life prior to 1985 is pretty hazy, detail-wise, and likely to get hazier as the old files and papers are sent to the landfill.
Kudos to Mr Lukas, "the journalist, blogger, collector, and generally curious New Yorker," as he was described in the article, for his collecting and sharing of this marvelous find and reminder of how some things used to be.
