Hyperdocumentation is not an established word in English or in French – at least not yet! But that does not mean that the word is not needed or that what this book examines is not important.

When Paul Otlet and Henri LaFontaine formed an organization to solve the world’s information problems in 1895, they described their work as a bibliography, which had acquired a new meaning in the 17th century. Instead of its long-established literal meaning – the writing out of texts – it began to denote writings about books, both the enumeration of lists of books and the study of books themselves. However, then as now, the word bibliography had a disadvantage. It was generally understood to be limited to publications printed on paper and, especially, with traditional hand-press printing techniques. Valuable as that material is, such a limited perception is intolerable if, like Otlet and his colleagues, one is interested in advancing the beneficial use of knowledge in society. Clearly it was essential to be concerned with all forms of recorded knowledge, all forms of media, and evidence of any kind.

The resolution was to adopt document as the term of choice for any and all objects regarded as signifying, as evidence of anything. By extension, during the 1930s documentation came to replace bibliography as the term of choice in Otlet’s circle and elsewhere. What began as an International Institute for Bibliography in 1895 became an International Institute for Documentation (IID) in 1931 and the International Federation for Documentation in 1937.

Documentation, like bibliography, is ambiguous in that it can refer either to an activity or to a material object, either the action of documenting or to documents themselves.

Hyper-, as a prefix, like super-, adds a sense of something more than the ordinary. Unlike super, which is either neutral or positive, hyper tends to have a neutral or negative connotation, which makes it more suitable for the subject matter of this book.

This book is about the profound effects of the widespread adoption of digital technology in all aspects of our daily life and of society. It is a characteristic of digital technology that it operates by the use of copies. Everything is recorded and every operation on any record typically generates another copy or, at least, another version. Further, all digital technology is algorithmic: it follows formal rules. Since life and meaning and emotion and understanding are generally neither digital nor algorithmic, it follows that the documentation of our lives and of our social world are, more or less, simplifications and approximations.

Writings about the impact of new technology, whether describing a utopian or a dystopian prospect, are too often written with breathless excitement in futuristic terms that lack historical grounding or awareness. So it is a welcome merit of the present book that it is firmly grounded in properly historical roots. The prospect of a totalizing environment in which privacy is lacking is far from new. Nor is commentary of this prospect new.

The author bases his story in the writings of the indefatigable Paul Otlet, who for decades thought deeply about what is now commonly referred to as the emergent Information Society, which would be more accurately called the emerging Document Society. This basis in the writings of Paul Otlet, valuable in its own right, has the additional benefit of providing a chronological framework that facilitates the presentation of others who have addressed the issues under discussion. With some simplification we can identify three groups.

First, there are what we might call documentalists in linear descent from Otlet, notably Suzanne Briet and Robert Pagès. Briet’s (1951) manifesto Qu’est-ce que la documentation? (What is documentation?) is known now for her penetrating, if rather conservative, account of documents, documentalists, and the growing role of documentation in advancing a new, modernist, Eurocentric international order. But her larger impact was in co-founding and directing the professional training in documentation, known since 1951 as the National Institute for Techniques of Documentation (INTD) in Paris. Robert Pagès, anarchist activist turned social psychologist, was one of Briet’s students. Pagès grew up during the rise of totalitarian regimes: the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, militaristic Japan, and Franco’s Spain. Already in 1948, Pagès provided an explanation of how new media technologies were obliterating the Enlightenment vision of rational individual by the enveloping trend to media which provided manufactured vicarious experiences, through cinema in particular, and totalizing economic and political forces – mass media, mass politics, mass production, total warfare, working in teams – that were undermining both the Enlightenment vision of the rational individual and the capitalist dream of rational choice in a market economy.

Second, there are other better-known scholars outside the documentalists’ circles, notably Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Bruno Latour, who have had much to say about documents, the use of documentation, the archaeology of knowledge, and the political uses of documents.

Thirdly, there are what we might call neo-documentalists, more recent writers who have rediscovered, revived interest in, and developed the forgotten ideas of Otlet, Briet and Pagès. In this group we can include, for example, Niels Lund, Bernd Frohmann, Ronald Day, and Maurizio Ferraris.

This book is exceptional both in the manner in which all these varied writings (and many more) have been presented and also in the clear demonstration that interest in and concerns about hyperdocumentation predate the development of digital computers and the Internet. This welcome historical awareness helps to undermine the traditional historical amnesia of Information Science. That in itself is a sufficient reason to read and to welcome this book. And yet, in these days of Black Lives Matter and gilets jaunes (yellow vests), more is needed. Pious statements and righteous protests have little effect. This book provides a basis for doing more.

A just civil society needs more than an enlightened legal regime. It depends on accountability, and accountability depends on accessible documentation and the possibility of interpreting that evidence. Capitalist economies depend on trustworthy written documentation; fake news undermines democracy; corruption thrives on the lack of transparency; and so on. It is a long list.

It is easy, but a serious mistake, to underestimate the power and role of documentation. Current pressures to improve police behavior were enabled by new forms of documentation: bodycams and smartphone videos. The Great Recession of 2008 was caused in the USA by dishonest mortgage documents, fraudulently rated investment products (“securitization”), and evictions that, in hindsight, were mostly illegal because of defects in the documentation of ownership – all on a massive scale – with devastating long-term effects on those who could least afford to lose what little wealth they had.¹ Defective documentation of ownership of houses greatly reduces what the owner can sell it for. This kind of defective documentation is endemic in developing and formerly communist countries. This situation encourages extra-legal enforcement and is estimated to depress owners’ wealth by an estimated US$ 9.34 trillion (sic!).² Since poverty, prejudice, health, homelessness, and crime are interrelated, the impact is extensive. Documentation matters!

I believe that with crime and corruption a high probability of detection offers more deterrence (at a far lower cost!) than severe punishment. Detection depends on accessible evidence and an ability to interpret it. Forensic analysis is not limited to crime. Versatile investigative expertise is needed across a wide range of activities to achieve a healthy, safe, just and democratic environment.

Paul Otlet was dedicated to an expansion of the interest in physical forms of documentation beyond printed documents to include administrative records, statistical data sets, heritage objects, specimens, and records of every kind. Viewed this way, an ambitious concern with the management of physical evidence, making it physically and intellectually accessible to various users – hyperdocumentation – provides the ideal basis for a basis for a knowledgeable society.

Documentation is important because, in the words of one of Olivier Le Deuff’s sources, “documentation is to culture what machinery is to industry”.

Michael BUCKLAND
Berkeley