How to Take Liberties with History: Abby Smith Rumsey on what we should remember and what we should forget about the past

EPISODE 1786: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Abby Smith Rumsey, author of MEMORY, EDITED, about what we should remember and what we should forget about history

Abby Smith Rumsey is an intellectual and cultural historian. She focuses on the impact of information technologies on perceptions of history, time, and identity, the nature of evidence, and the changing roles of libraries and archives. Her most recent book is When We Are No More: How Digital Memory is Shaping our Future (2016). Rumsey served as director of the Scholarly Communication Institute at the University of Virginia; Director of Programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources; and manager of programs relating to preservation of and access to cultural heritage collections at the Library of Congress. She served on the National Science Foundation’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Economics of Digital Preservation and Access; the American Council of Learned Societies’ Commission on the Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences; and the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure Program. Board service includes: Chair, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences; the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library Advisory Council; the Stanford University Library Advisory Committee; the Society of Architectural Historians; the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia; and the Harvard Board of Overseers Committee to Visit the Harvard University Library. Rumsey received a BA from Harvard College and MA and PhD in Russian and intellectual history from Harvard University.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.