DISQUS

mturro · 1 year ago

Interesting post. I've been reading The Black Swan and it has readjusted my whole idea of history. In it Taleb dwells on something he refers to as "the cemetery of silent evidence" - all the stuff that history has forgotten either because of the destruction or obscurity of the original artifact.

Essentially, what you are worried about has always been... we always have lost and always will lose bits of "us" as time progresses. The funny thing is that the future won't care... it will route around the loss and construct it's history based on what has survived. History doesn't represent truth or accuracy as much as represents our current perspective.

I think at some basic level we all understand this and that is what drives the angst you're feeling. We all want to remembered as we are... we all want the truth of this whole thing to sustain. We all want future history to be as accurate as possible. Yet we know instinctively it's just not possible.

Lauren · 1 year ago

If no one else does, Google will archive al of this stuff and with storage getting cheaper and cheaper, most websites will be stored in multiple places, accessed years later and stored even more times. Whether they can link the stuff back to you personally is iffy, but the sentiments will be there.

Liz · 1 year ago

Good post. I work with some digital preservation issues and I am always amazed at how little people discuss these topics. It seems that everyone is in this whirlwind of content creation and no one is think about content preservation. Even in the case of the files on our computers - we have no way of guaranteeing that they will be available to read (as in open) in 20 years. And you're right - what do we do about the stuff we don't even technically possess...?