Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms

This is a review of Acker’s Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms, which is part of the Information Society series by MIT Press. The book comprises 247 pages; it is organized into Acknowledgements, six chapters (and an epilogue) of 172 pages, followed by Notes, Bibliography, and Index. The book offers an overview of the history of data archiving practices in our societies over the past decades. The initial three chapters establish the socio-technological context of our information society’s history. The rest of the book discusses new possibilities for data portability and big data archiving and examines how methods for collecting personal data are transitioning from personally controlled settings to platforms and data brokers. The author delivers a wake-up call to regain control over our data and keep it for the future, and that is the book’s central takeaway.