Permanence

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.

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Possibly related:

• One Day in Hell
• Forgive and Forget
• RSA Talk — Delete