Thomas Mullaney in Conversation with Abby Smith Rumsey: How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information

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City Lights and W. W. Norton & Company celebrate the publication of “How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information”. Thomas Mullaney in conversation with Abby Smith Rumsey discussing the new book "How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information" by Thomas Mullaney, a brilliant foray into the nature of information, of history, and of making meaning in the face of death and decay. When world-renowned scholar Thomas S. Mullaney “lost” both his parents, he began thinking of how information—all the stuff that makes us, that we make, and that we leave behind—ultimately disappears. The information that makes up our lives, from mundane official documents, poignant family photos, and sentimental artifacts to the cues embodied in our genes, both defines us, and inevitably decays, no matter the medium. Everything that we put “in formation” eventually collapses into randomness. Never is this more evident than in the wake of a parent’s death. Yet from all these elusive, even evanescent, data points, history is written and a future is made. "How We Disappear" is a wide-ranging examination of the micro and macro, toggling between storytelling from Mullaney’s own life and his reflection on the science of entropy and the nature and history of information. Lyrical and poignant, the book offers inspiring and eye-opening insight on the miracle of existence, and on what it means to forge meaning from a chaotic universe. Thomas S. Mullaney is an award–winning Stanford historian, Guggenheim fellow, and former Kluge Chair in Technology and Society at the Library of Congress. He is the author of four books on Chinese history and technology and lives in Palo Alto, California. 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. She is Chair of the Board of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavior Sciences at Stanford University. Her books include "Memory, Edited. Taking Liberties with History" (MIT Press 2023) and "When We Are No More: How Digital Memory is Shaping our Future" (Bloomsbury Press 2016). (via City Lights)

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