Pocketarchive: Sharing is the new way of saving

This essay discusses the smartphone with its advanced applications as a pocketarchive . The term pocketarchive was first introduced at Imagine IC during the participatory gathering of the collection of the exhibition Let s Party . This article considers the pocketarchive as a documentation of modern cultural intangible heritage. Primarily the users of the pocket archive are adolescents. They are the main generators of modern intangible heritage. Besides creating and doing intangible heritage, they also collect the so called rituals, via audio-, video- and tex-documentation. In the first place they are doing so because the specific ritual has a personal significance to them. But mostly collected items are meant to be shared via social media. Although adolescents share their collections. it has to be noted that not every item is meant to be shared, adolescents seem to make a strict distinction between private, and public material. By collecting and sharing items adolescents build up a dynamic, global accessible archive. Shared items are being saved in pocketarchives all over the world. Considering this dynamic process of data-sharing as modern ways of saving it comes clear that sharing is the new way of saving. In traditional archives the actuary is responsible for the selection of the collection, and making it accessible for open public. Users of the pocket archive have replaced the actuary and have become the curators of their own archives. These developments lead to new questions about preserving archives and making them accessible.