The article starts with an asymmetric comparison of the survival of a single set of documents from 2,000 years ago and then lamenting the loss of some documents today. We don’t have all the songs 16 year olds wrote 2,000 years ago. But that is largely what was lost in the MySpace’s data loss. The truth is, we’ve lost the vast majority of what was created in every era and there is no reason to believe we are losing more today than 2,000 years ago or even 100 years ago.
Shining a light on the digital dark age
111–120 of 137 posts
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#112The article starts with an asymmetric comparison of the survival of a single set of documents from 2,000 years ago and then lamenting the loss of some documents today. We don’t have all the songs 16 year olds wrote 2,000 years ago. But that is largely what was lost in the MySpace’s data loss. The truth is, we’ve lost the vast majority of what was created in every era and there is no reason to believe we are losing mo…
But we are losing more these days than 2000 years ago. And we save lots more as well. Think of how many billions people can write or paint now and can make photos. How many could write or paint then?
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
It certainly does in Spain. We even extended it to videogames, although I don't know how much that achieves when so many games are barely playable before the first few patches, have much of their content released in future updates and many are unplayable after the servers close.
Code source + Assets or binary?
Just compiled game program and assets, simply a copy of whatever build you published.
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#114Why worry, in 100 years AI will create all the music one likes in a second, and if one wants sweet memories of the past, AI will create those too) And inject something to extract sweet nostalgic tears.
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#115The article starts with an asymmetric comparison of the survival of a single set of documents from 2,000 years ago and then lamenting the loss of some documents today. We don’t have all the songs 16 year olds wrote 2,000 years ago. But that is largely what was lost in the MySpace’s data loss. The truth is, we’ve lost the vast majority of what was created in every era and there is no reason to believe we are losing mo…
But we are losing more these days than 2000 years ago. And we save lots more as well. Think of how many billions people can write or paint now and can make photos. How many could write or paint then?
People were creative back then too. Most of it just wasn't captured other than orally and we have lost the vast, vast majority of that.
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#116This is the first time I've heard the phrase "Digital Dark Ages", and without any further context I'd say it's a great name for what's happening right now. I feel like every year we're taking more steps backward with the ever-increasing ratio of user-hostile platforms wresting control and dignity away from the end-user. In some 100-200 years I think humanity will course-correct and they'll look back at this time as the "lost age".
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#117I've been noticing this a lot lately in one of my little hobbies of Halloween events. There's so much history from events in the early 2000s that has been lost. So many links in ancient web forums that 404 and aren't in the Internet archive. Info from the 2010s is much better but still missing a lot of media. As an individual, I certainly don't have the resources of some of the organizations listed in this article bu…
On the other hand, most public text files from 80's and 90's are still here.
Data encapsulated in simple formats inevitably survive longer.
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#118Would it be a good idea to create something like the arctic vault for other info? What are the logistics of that?
Similar to their Rosetta Stone disk, if we store enough data to decide just the first content. Like TOC, some intros, etc, and some instructions on how to build a rudimentary device to read/decide the next, more compressed, digital bits of info, so that after accessing this second level data, you could gradually build better devices to decode more if the library.
So some data can remain unretrievable without going through the first steps, but it would still be accessible.
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#119What worries me isn't so much that data is lost, or even is thrown away, but rather it's being actively buried because it's hidden behind a commercially-driven search-based interface that deprioritizes old, information-rich but less-entertaining and certainly less-profitable media. Searching for anything has regressed to the mean of what SEO and ad dollars want to show you.
Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age
#120Id like to also highlight the need to preserve personal and business data stored in a variety of SaaS services. Google export is a great example of a large provider doing the right thing. I wish most smaller SaaS companies were similar.
Specifically, I've been recently looking for accounting software for Polish VAT accounting.
I'd much prefer standalone software rather than SaaS, but I found none. Only SaaS offerings. Of a dozen of them only one has a public API one can use to export data(if one writes exporting software). None have ability to export all data in a simple format in one go.
Why does it matter? Accounting records, buy/sell invoices, expense documents etc gathered over years and decades can be very valuable.
Personally, despite being against over regulation in general, I think there should be some law that required SaaS companies to provide reasonable data export capability. GDPR already gives people an ability to request all data another entity has on them, but making it an essential part of the service that could be used regularly (as a backup of sorts) would be much better.