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Shining a light on the digital dark age

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Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#31

Post by esafak »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #27
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?

IMO social media got a little better once temporary stories came out. Slack’s limited search history is a feature too - forces you to document using appropriate tools and not endless email threads…

In my experience it makes people ask the same questions over and over.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#32

Post by imtringued »

Oh I know. There is an easy solution to this. Just sell the information for Bitcoin and use Bitcoin as a store of value and then in the future buy the information back using the store of value feature of Bitcoin.

(Cough, someone still has to store the information.)

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#33

Post by ModernMech »

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?

Depends on how many whales are left in 100 years.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#34

Post by HappMacDonald »

grglburgp wrote: post #24

Attenuation of signal is how reality works. Generational churn means eventually no one who knows why the nested dolls were nested as they are will be gone. Humans will create a new set of nested dolls they can grok. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson; clearly the dead do not rule the living. Edit; forgot this point… Maybe he said that; it’s unverifiable for us. Maintenance of hallucination is all it ends up. Reality we se…

> Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson; clearly the dead do not rule the living.

Yeah but don't listen to him, he's dead.

Hence we can safely conclude that the dead do rule the living.

Checkmate, Epimenides!

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#35

Post by justrealist »

nemo wrote: post #7
seydor wrote: post #2

Good. Every time we forget the old world, we reinvent it better

>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)

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#36

Post by chrisco255 »

grglburgp wrote: post #24

Attenuation of signal is how reality works. Generational churn means eventually no one who knows why the nested dolls were nested as they are will be gone. Humans will create a new set of nested dolls they can grok. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson; clearly the dead do not rule the living. Edit; forgot this point… Maybe he said that; it’s unverifiable for us. Maintenance of hallucination is all it ends up. Reality we se…

The only reason you can paraphrase Thomas Jefferson is because his words were archived a long time ago, and the archives have survived all this time.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#37

Post by cj »

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

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.

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#38

Post by imtringued »

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…

Absence? Technically we haven't even noticed their presence!

Re: Shining a light on the digital dark age

#39

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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 slowly died, and some stuff was put on youtube 15 years ago, and then got copyright claimed 5 years ago, and was removed. The music groups don't exist anymore, so the CDs aren't publushed anymore, second hand shops are very rare and cater mostly to LPs and tourists, and the groups stopped existing before they could sign deals with the publisher for streaming services.

So yeah, it's not just "those semi-personal photos taken on a party and kept by maybe one or two people", but also pop-music that used to be on the radio all the time in late 80s, early 90s, and is just..gone!

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.

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