Provocative. . . . Murphy is a witty writerand a 'media archaeologist'!who travels deep underground to see for himself the weirdest and most fanatical efforts to preserve records. . . An engaging tour of the crises that propelled each new wave of preservation anxiety and the attendant technological advancementsfrom time capsules to wax cylinders to DNA-based memory chips.Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World
This thought-provoking, often revelatory book is highly recommended for college and university libraries as well as for supplemental reading lists for graduate students in information scienceand cultural studies, specifically cultural anthropology. It provides a context for the work of librarians that lends depth andsometimes frighteningcontext to their work.Jeffrey Garrett, College & Research Libraries
Gas and glass, capsules and crypts, microfilm and mines and monuments: these are among the tools weve deployed to protect our data from a host of threatsfrom dust and vermin to demographic diversification and nuclear war. In We the Dead, Brian Michael Murphy takes us on a simultaneously breathtaking and explosive tour of the various archives and databases that hold our records, and the human subjects they document, in suspension between life and death.Shannon Mattern, author of Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media
Well written, thoughtful, and provocative. We the Dead is intellectually engaging and fascinatingI can honestly think of very few books like it.Tung-Hui Hu, author of A Prehistory of the Cloud
We the Dead is the rare book that opens new lines of investigation while also entertaining and provoking the reader. Some of the historical case studies that Murphy unearthed (gas chambers for rare books! durable metal film strips! atomic bombtested filing cabinets!) were so outrageous and profound that I found myself laughing out loud while reading. It was a shock of recognition. . . . We are already the dead of the books title, whether we like it or not.Brian Hochman, author of The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States
