Annual Meeting of the Document Academy (DOCAM 2024)
Documents involve technology, meaning they change with the times. The ancient Latin root of “document” referred to an oral teaching, and centuries later the most common form of document was a piece of paper. Now, with computing widespread, perhaps most documents are digital. What will tomorrow’s documents bring, particularly in light of generative AI? What might change, and what might stay the same?
There’s a long history of imagining the future of documents—think of fictional representations like Star Wars holograms and space billboards in Blade Runner, or of academic imaginings like Vannevar Bush’s Memex or J. C. R. Licklider’s vision of man–computer symbiosis.
The theme for this year’s Annual Meeting of the Document Academy invites attendees to reflect on the future of documents—and because the future is informed by the past, we may simultaneously also reflect on the past of documents.