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Is Anything We Make Online Now Going To Exist in the Future?
Here is a question that wrestles with the very odd state in which we find ourselves now: we can currently keep insane quantities of data, but can we keep it for longer than, oh, five years? "I just found out that I have a very serious disease. I may have only a couple of years left, probably no more than five. I have two very young kids. How do I archive stuff on the Web so I know they'll have access to it, whenever they want, for at least the next 40 years?"
Wait. Are you trying to tell us something?
Machines don't care about your frivolous human information!
Aren't there internet companies that specifically offer archival services? Or go old school and keep journals and photo albums like people USED TO DO.
That's what I was thinking. Hasn't this person heard of photos and books? You know, things on paper? They last thousands of years and there will never be a 2.0 version of those.
Team Papyrus. Print it out, because sites, especially early ones from the '90s, go under and you lose a big chunk of your writing. *sniff*
@LondonLee @Bookish: Plus, online you don't get that great "old book smell".
@Bookish – or you spill coffee into your lap top, and lose the only novel you've ever written, ending your potential career as a storied bon vivant cadging free meals at Meanhattan's trendiest bistros before it even began.
cordially,
It's Back To Work For Me.
I have my great-grandfather's journals. My favorite two entries:
{date}
Mrs. (name) down the road was found drown in the river this morning.
*a few days later*
(date)
The Police went to go talk to Mr. (name) today, guess he killed himself. Looks he threw Mrs. (name) in the river.
Ahhh, small town life.
Goons, are you familiar with "Wisconsin Death Trip" and the documentary made about the book? You would dig it the most.
I WATCHED IT LAST NIGHT!!!
This psychic love connection, it is just too strong, baybeee.
No, and that's a good thing.
Also, not everything you've ever uttered/typed will be of fascinating import to your progeny. Fifty years from now their eyes will be glazing over at your internet comments about some idjit named Lindsay Lohan.
Dear Person with serious disease,
Before you die it's important to put an out of office auto reply on your email. Include important links to your flickr and youtube accounts.
What about the gimmick tumblr? Don't forget the gimmick tumblr.
all it'll take is an algorithm to write lazy captions for each user-submitted picture of a baby with a foot in its mouth if you want to keep babieswithfeetintheirmouths.tumblr.com going strong
Oh great. It's not enough that I have to throw out your drawers full of garbage ties and dirty underwear. Now I have to take a broom to your myspace page. Fanfuckingtastic. Note to world, I nobody cares about your worthless possessions that much.
I, Nobody
@STC: Pipe down or Gramps won't let you fondle his skidmarked union suits again.
Interesting. The guy says he wants to "preserve the context" of the pictures and texts. And that's why he wants a "digital solution". What does that mean? Is he talking about a time capsule like scenario where he wants his kids to experience his vids and pics exactly the way he created, preserved and experienced them?
Go ask Tiger Woods that question, wrap.
Haha!! I will also ask famed online context preservation experts Jesse James and Lindsay Lohan. All in all, that should be adequite.
I'm just pissed that my Geocities website from high school is no longer available.
I'm remembering eerily rotating fluorescent yellow GIFs that say 'CLICK HERE!!!' and Keeny G MIDIs and weeping gently.
Put everything in an external hard drive and put it in a safety deposit box?
Or, you know, have your spouse/sibling/relative/friend promise they'll keep an eye on your shit for you.
They really just want to know where you put the will and title to the Bentley.
"In order to get my inheritance, you must read my comments on a haunted blog for a whole night!"
Fortunately, I hate everything I wrote/designed/animated from more than two years ago. It's a feature, not a bug.
I think about this everyday. I think in the future we will develop ways to retrieve information (to the extent that the databases and motherboards and whatnot are not physically destroyed) that is more or less lost but it will be more like archaeology than a bank. As the first responder says to the person in the thing: print everything out.
I'm just mostly concerned with my now all-digitized music library.
You will be back begging, BEGGING, for my vinyl.
This is exactly what a good friend said in the early 90s, when I finally started going CD.
Cryogenics. Freeze your computer.
To make future mojitos for our robot overlords.
New horrible thing to consider: the children of the future, soberly contemplating dad's earnest YouTube lipsyching in junior high/grandma's teenage toplessness on spring break/mom's rambling college blog about drugs and sex with strangers.
Some things need to digitally rot away.
In the future the internet will be Terabytes of Cat videos.
That is all.