Written on the Wind

The sky is not the limit in the cloud.

About a generation ago (01998), Stewart Brand wrote an essay titled Written on the Wind, so as to be forward-thinking about archiving the Internet. Also around that time, I was researching glass CDs for longer data archiving, while first hearing about the Clock of the Long Now. 

The Long Now is already starting to show its age. The permanence by which we associate the internet is also subject to entropy. As it turns out, we don't have to save everything as a shield against a loss of memory. What's better is an ongoing mindful curation of what to keep. Things like the Long Now Clock are a mnemonic for that curation: The clock is simply a reminder of what we remembered to remember. But it's not easy to simply adopt a new way of thinking about storage on a network, as link-rot will begin to happen without our direct involvement in the preservation of data saved on networks. Social media is only a partial solution, as algorithms sort what they determine is relevant based on what we thought was relevant before. (We want to avoid patterns because we get too comfortable with them.) Also, I've noticed that Facebook data downloads are full of corrupted image files.

As the internet ages, it will have many more "missing teeth", with "teeth" meaning large swathes of history. https://medium.com/fast-company/flickrs-new-free-offering-is-better-than-amazing-it-s-sustainable-287c18cd1b2c