We have no idea, do we, of where this stuff will be in the future?
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”
That’s what Omar Khayyam wrote. But it‘s rubbish, isn’t it, here in the digital world?
The moving finger writes and bits are written, but they can be unwritten at the drop of a hat. Maybe I’ll forget to renew this hosting account and domain name. And then it’s gone. Three years of writing down the pan. Link Rot is so widespread that there’s a name for it – even a wikipedia entry. Ask around for Geocities users, for example. My first proper website about Hamlet got wiped from Hypermart without explanation in 1999.
Oh hoh! – you say – if you are in a swashbuckler sort of mood. “But Ian, there is the Internet Archive and Google. They save the lot.”
Let’s take the two separately. The Internet Archive is a not-for-profit that may or may not exist tomorrow. Google will do what it has to. Maximise profit for shareholders. Its priorities are not yours.
Writing and Digital Writing have a key difference when it comes to history and permanence. The pen-written word is permanent – what is written in ink is in history, has happened, will always have happened. Digital Writing is subject to UNDO, link-rot, moderation, invisible and unlimited revision, and ultimately, erasure. Digital Writing is inherently unsafe, written in water, whatever the writer’s or publisher’s intentions at the time of publication.
On the other hand. I was talking with my friend Deirdre the other day about memory and the Internet. That the way we consider our past is reconfigured because we have continual access to the primary data.
The opposing case says this, and it also holds a lot of value:
I can see exactly what happened at *that* party four years ago because there are dozens of photos/videos/posts about it. The past doesn’t decompose the way it used to. While once upon a time, my memory of the party was that it was wild and enormous fun, the raw data might show that we were all over-intoxicated and some people were clearly not so happy. Twitter doesn’t currently archive, but it, or its successor, will do so very soon – and so we’ll have access to everyone’s impressions of the party as it happened, *then*.
And then we start to rely on it, perhaps. At the age of 14 I knew the capitals of every major country in the world. I don’t anymore, because what’s the point? I can Google it. So we don’t need to remember stuff. I used to know 10 phone numbers off by heart. Today I know none, because they’re stored in my mobile. So what’s the point?
There’s two strands to my thoughts here:
(a) We have semi-permanent access to our past. This enormously affects our ideas about our own history. They will be more ‘true’ in a way, but our understanding of what the reflexion of Internet publishing means is still very naive. Memory and the past is changing, but I don’t think we know how, yet.
(b) That we are eagerly abrogating responsibility for knowledge and also memory. My phonebook, pictures, thoughts – my people, my past – are in other people’s hands. And those people don’t care about my past or my memories. They might well get wiped. I’m anxious about that as well.
More anon.
Ian, expletively powerful stuff. Here’s that article I mentioned down the pub:
On memory, forgetting and the net – James Harkin
http://www.jamesharkin.co.uk/2009/on-memory-forgetting-and-the-net-feature-in-tomorrows-sunday-times-london/
What’s really spooky is how you’ve gone on to convey here exactly what I think on other things related to this that we didn’t actually discuss! So this is what happens when you hove into view one night at an event on RSS (http://blip.tv/file/74092)… synchronicity and brilliance :-)
I need to ruminate a bit but yeah, I hear you. At least four large sites I’ve edited and written reams for (and helped build/design) – some of which I also actually cared about – have gone forever, thanks to the wonders of the interwebs. And yes, the Internet Archive is wiping old stuff it archives on the WayBackMachine because they can’t afford to store it all I guess. But no-one seems to be thinking about what this means in the long-term, never mind how it impacts us personally and professionally. They (we?) are all caught up in the moment.
Can’t quite muster the digital quill to respond in kind just now. But to hell with currency, I’ll get round to it. In the meantime here’s a few other interesting pieces on impermanence and it’s possible unknown flipside, but none of them come even close to your concentrated focus… (hoping you comment spam filter doesn’t chew ‘em):
When others delete your past – Dan Gillmor
http://mediactive.com/2009/05/09/when-others-delete-your-past/
The internet cupboard – Russell Davies
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2008/09/the-internet-cu.html
We’re in danger of losing our memories – Lynne Brindley
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/25/internet-heritage
Ephemeral forever – Alan Patrick
http://broadstuff.com/archives/1616-Ephemeral-For-Ever.html
Saying that The Internet Archive “may not” exist is not the same as arguing that it won’t exist. What are your arguments that it will go away?
I think the interesting point is that we cannot predict permanence. Off-the-cuff comments that we wish would be expunged may haunt us forever while exquisitely crafted emails may be nowhere to be found.
What percentage of the written word was really ‘permanent’ in the pre-Internet era?
Pen and paper — or even published book – may feel permanent but I’d bet a tiny fraction proves to be.
Maybe permanence comes form the strength of the idea and quality of the telling — whether digital or analog…
Doug, Dumbledad:
I’ve quite possibly painted myself into a corner here. However, I do stand by the notion that the printed word has a different status to electronic text. I recall throwing away reams of paper doing my A-levels, since that was the only way to re-draft anything. Electronic text, on the other hand, is inherently malleable. The way that everything is now recorded in the latter form has considerable implications for memory, history, etc.
Not really sure what they are yet, granted!
I do agree digital is different — just not sure what the implications are yet.
You might like Nicholson Baker’s book ‘Double Fold’ on how libraries destroyed physical newspapers in place of crappy microfilm:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Double-Fold-Libraries-Assault-Paper/dp/0375726217/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256309738&sr=8-9
[...] digital permanence was the dish of the day. But the opposite view – that digital is an extremely fragile and ephemeral medium for so much of human culture and activity to be engraved and invested in, and that we should make [...]
Finally got it together post-Delete and gathered my thoughts, sort of…
http://innovationeye.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/delete-not-fade-away-and-radiate/