1. What we leave behind.
- Author
-
Firth, Niall
- Subjects
- *
INTERNET forums , *SCIENTIFIC archives , *EXTERNAL hard disk drives , *VIRTUAL machine systems , *TECHNOLOGICAL innovations , *MICROBLOGS - Abstract
This article explores the challenges of preserving and understanding the vast amount of data created in the digital age. It emphasizes the fragility of digital data and the risk of losing important information due to platform shutdowns or technological obsolescence. The Internet Archive is mentioned as an organization working to save and store digital content, including websites, videos, and texts. The article also discusses the importance of preserving diverse perspectives and the potential use of AI in future historical research. It raises questions about what data should be saved and how future generations will make sense of it. Additionally, the article highlights various projects and technologies aimed at creating durable and accessible archives, such as the Long Now Foundation's Clock of the Long Now and Rosetta Disc, Microsoft Research's Project Silica, and GitHub's storage facility in Svalbard, Norway. The article emphasizes the need to store information in formats that can be decoded in the future and raises questions about what data will be considered valuable by future historians. [Extracted from the article]
- Published
- 2024