- Robert Darnton was born on May 10, 1939 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Son of New York Times correspondent Byron "Barney" Darnton who was killed while reporting in World War II.
- Grandnephew of Charles Darnton.
- Brother of John Darnton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote "Neanderthal" and "The Darwin Conspiracy".
- [on conducting documentary research] Wherever they are, when first approached, archives are intimidating. Even if the setting does not unnerve you, you feel daunted at the enormity of the task: how to convert endless scribbles on paper into something that could pass for history...The first box arrives. You undo a faded ribbon on one side, fold back the cover and pull out the top dossier. You start reading, one document after another, one folder after another, one box after another. The sequence could go on forever. How to make sense of it all?
- To imagine a future in which the digital destroys the analog is to misunderstand current trajectories and the history of communication in general. New media do not extinguish old ones, at least not in the short run. Instead, they enlarge and enrich the information landscape.
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