Iara Lima

There is a curious feeling that accompanies those who do research in areas linked to technology.

You write about the present knowing that, when the text is finally published, part of it will already belong to the past.

Scientific production has always needed time. Peer review, corrections, new readings, opinions. This care is one of the reasons why we trust science. Knowledge needs to be confronted before it circulates.

The problem is that the world has changed speed.

Today, while an article travels through its editorial path, new technologies emerge, platforms disappear, artificial intelligence models are replaced, and entire forms of producing information cease to exist.

It is not a system error. It is a change of scale.

For centuries, human knowledge evolved at a pace relatively compatible with the time needed to study it. Today, often, we study an object that has already begun to transform even before the research is finished.

This makes me think of the Library of Alexandria.

When we remember it, we immediately think of the fires and the loss of thousands of manuscripts. But there is a second, less commented story.

Alexandria was not extraordinary only for the number of books it held. It also needed to figure out how to organize all that: how to locate a text, how to bring together works on the same subject, how to allow knowledge to be retrieved.

That question remains exactly the same.

The difference is that the objects have changed.

Information Science has developed extraordinary tools for organizing books, documents, photographs, archives, and collections: DDC, UDC, thesauri, FRBR/LRM, and MARC.

All these instruments were born in a world where information still fit into relatively stable categories: books, documents, records, and objects.

The 21st century, however, began to produce very different objects. We deal with digital experiences, interactions mediated by algorithms, and hybrid objects that did not exist when these models were conceived. Media such as floppy disks, VHS tapes, CDs, and DVDs already belong to another historical layer of transformation.

Now we speak of systems that record behavior. Perhaps, in the future, we will preserve conversations. Artificial intelligence models. Games. Immersive experiences. Social networks. Living databases. Interactions between people and algorithms.

How to represent all of this?

How to preserve something that changes daily?

How to describe a digital experience without reducing its complexity?

Perhaps these are some of the great questions of our generation.

They do not belong only to Library Science, Archival Science, or Museology.

They also concern Computing, Design, Anthropology, History, Philosophy, Law, and all areas that try to understand how we record human experience. And it is not an exclusive task of information scientists.

It falls to them the responsibility for the ethical structuring of what will be preserved, classified, and made accessible in the future. But this requires broader collaboration with technology.

It is about thinking about the construction of a system that can be implemented in memory preservation spaces and that is capable of retrieving information regardless of the medium in which it is recorded.

The more I study embroidery, the more I realize that my interest was never merely in the fabric. It was always memory.

Embroidery ended up becoming a question about permanence.

How to preserve what time insists on transforming?

You see, embroidery is not only its tangible form. It is not only the threads nor the fabric. It is the memory, the knowledge, the technique, and everything that arises from this knowledge.

Perhaps that is exactly the question that runs through all of Information Science. Not only to preserve, but to ensure that what has been preserved can continue to be understood in the future, through a system capable of retrieving information regardless of the digital or physical object that contains it and making it accessible to future generations.

As I write this text, hundreds of researchers are experiencing the same thing: research being evaluated, articles awaiting opinions, ideas maturing in silence.

And that is part of science. But the world keeps moving while we wait.

I believe this is one of the greatest challenges of our time: finding ways to preserve scientific rigor without losing the ability to dialogue with a present that changes every day.

Because knowledge is not only meant to explain the past.

It also needs to accompany the future as it happens.