By now it is old news that the Library of Congress will be archiving all public tweets ever tweeted since the first one in March of 2006, a total that numbers in the billions. It's staggering: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets per day.
I first heard this news on the radio while driving through midsummer Charlottesville, Virginia—bright, mountainous, and devastatingly hot. I was shocked—who could have imagined that Twitter would be so influential—that the daily doings and thoughts of millions of people, in 140 characters or less, would be deemed a profound indication of social trend?
I still had Twitter and this latest news on my mind a few weeks later when I took a day trip to Washington DC. Touring a snippet of the National Gallery for the afternoon, I rounded a corner and stood inches away from one of Monet's famous paintings of Rouen Cathedral. You know the story: he visited the site of the French cathedral every day for an entire winter, obsessively painting and repainting it to capture it in different times of day. His subject was not the architecture of the building, but of the light. I had studied these paintings in textbooks, taken notes on slides of them in a dark classroom, and answered test questions about them. Now I could have reached out and touched them, shocked at their material existence.
It occurred to me that the idea of a museum—and its inhabitants—is evolving into more than just a building that houses artifacts and other objects of scientific, historic, or artistic importance. A museum is whatever groups culture, showcases genius, and demonstrates trends and progress. And apparently that could very well be my best friend's tweet from yesterday afternoon at 2:30 p.m, “I'm wearing a grey beret with a pin today.”
It seems our history will be catalogued for future generations in short blips and seemingly random, perhaps irrelevant, facts. But when have we ever had access to such detailed accounts of the daily life of an average person? We haven't.
Consider this: digital archiving happens on a much more personal level than the Library of Congress. For instance, how many emails are in your inbox? Or better yet, how many text messages are in your phone? I'll admit it: I never use the “delete all” function on my cellphone. Instead, there are hundreds of texts with which I can't part. From March I've saved, “need anything from the grocery store?” because it reminds me of how thoughtful my boyfriend is, or from yesterday, “I can now make dirty shirleys quite well” because it reminds me of going out for drinks every Wednesday night with friends.
In the face of all the evidence, I say that I visit a museum every time I log into email, Twitter, Facebook (think of your Facebook wall!), or open my phone. I am a walking talking archive of my own making.
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