Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shining a light on the digital dark age

longnow.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 137 posts

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#81

Post by cj »

colinsane wrote: post #74
cj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m sure the majority of books from over a hundred years ago are lost Especially if you include independently published books that weren't widely circulated. I wonder what percentage of total books this is. My grandfather published a book before he passed away. It was never sold online or in any big retail stores. Once the last hard copy is lost, it's gone forever.

> Once the last hard copy is lost, it's gone forever. i believe the Library of Congress will archive that book for you if you mail them a hard copy. assuming it has a ISBN, you’re in the US, etc.

That's a very good idea. Thanks for the tip.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#82

Post by TeMPOraL »

justrealist wrote: post #35
nemo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every time we forget the old world, we reinvent it better Historically that has not been the case for most of human history. As odd as it might seem, in general the rediscovery of the accomplishments ancient world has been a great driver towards progress. The periods when the accomplishments of the past were lost and fully forgotten were the sorts of times people call Dark Ages.

Actually the cities that are the most modern and progress-oriented today are the ones that felt comfortable bulldozing all relics of the past. (or the ones where the "old city" was destroyed in brutal urban warfare)

You mean the cities that are most expensive and worst to live in, because they didn't have relics of the past putting brakes on the greed of real estate owners and developers?

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#83

Post by OfSanguineFire »

espe wrote: post #49
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #39

I live in a small country with a weird language and with a lot of our local pop music... The new music is fine, everything is on youtube.... for now! ... but the older songs are disappearing. Years ago, we had a bunch of "mp3 sites" (websites where you could download pirated mp3s), that disappeared, a huge local torrent tracker, focusing also on local stuff, that lost most of the data in the OVH datacenter fire and s…

not sure it helps but - soulseek is pretty alive

I recently logged into Soulseek for the first time in about a decade, and I was unable to find lots of stuff that was commonly shared in the early millennium. It’s no secret that the generation most interested in audio filesharing is graying, and as many people raise families and have less and less time for obsessive music collecting, they fall away from the scene.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#84

Post by dappermanneke »

i don’t think people realise just how much of data degradation in the age of everything being documented online is a good thing. nobody wants to see your cringe from 20 years ago. the internet is a conduit for culture and much of it has to be erased and rebuilt with every generation, such is its nature

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#85

Post by justrealist »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #82
justrealist wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the cities that are the most modern and progress-oriented today are the ones that felt comfortable bulldozing all relics of the past. (or the ones where the "old city" was destroyed in brutal urban warfare)

You mean the cities that are most expensive and worst to live in, because they didn't have relics of the past putting brakes on the greed of real estate owners and developers?

This is word salad.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#86

Post by RetroTechie »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #39

I live in a small country with a weird language and with a lot of our local pop music... The new music is fine, everything is on youtube.... for now! ... but the older songs are disappearing. Years ago, we had a bunch of "mp3 sites" (websites where you could download pirated mp3s), that disappeared, a huge local torrent tracker, focusing also on local stuff, that lost most of the data in the OVH datacenter fire and s…

"I'm sure that there are data hoarders somewhere, that have mp3s of all those songs somewhere, but unless we get some p2p type of service like gnutella/ed2k/kazaa working again, I won't be able to find them anymore."

Such archives would need to be kept online though. If only archived (or hoarded), it's just data in a box that no-one can access.

Current internet is really poor at handling this long tail. Eg. a movie can be streamed & torrented, millions see it, many have it in personal archives, but 1 year later the torrent swarm has died out, and those personal archives of the downloaders aren't online. And then copyright holder pulls it from their streaming service.

Result: nowhere to be found. Even though popular not long ago.

Copies in personal archives don't count for much if others can't access that data.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#89

Post by version_five »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #39

I live in a small country with a weird language and with a lot of our local pop music... The new music is fine, everything is on youtube.... for now! ... but the older songs are disappearing. Years ago, we had a bunch of "mp3 sites" (websites where you could download pirated mp3s), that disappeared, a huge local torrent tracker, focusing also on local stuff, that lost most of the data in the OVH datacenter fire and s…

When I was in university late 90s early 00s, my friends and i had all kinds of music and tv clips downloaded from p2p sharing, that I have since lost and can't find. Clips from shows, remixes of songs. Like you say, somebody must have them, but they're not findable anymore.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#90

Post by AlbertCory »

rolobio wrote: post #28
izzydata wrote: post #18

I think there is something to be said about what is worth archiving. I don't know what it is that should be said though. It seems weird to me that as a society we might be saving things such as a 10 hour video of white noise for another 100 years rather than some personal blogs. What is and isn't worth saving?

It will probably end up being the most popular things, the most viewed or read. More copies of it, more likely to be archived. This reminds me of books. I’m sure the majority of books from over a hundred years ago are lost because they weren’t popular. We haven’t really noticed their absence…

> I’m sure the majority of books from over a hundred years ago are lost

If they were in one of the university libraries that Google scanned, they're not "lost." But you're right; you can't read them. Congress should mandate that the Library of Congress, at least, get a copy to preserve them for the ages.

Read the Atlantic article

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...

for the sad story.

Post reply on HN