7 ms·

Of all the photos being taken right now, it's odd to think there probably won't be discoveries of old photos in junk shops in 2150.

by pgrote 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
fn42 11y ago
"Hard drive from junk shop found to be from an old facebook server" I do wonder how digital archiving will work in the future. Hopefully something better than "the archive.org volunteers decided to archive it"
- valarauca1 11y ago
  You tell archive.org how often to archive a URL. So its not really up to their volunteers but the general population.
  - stevewilhelm 11y ago
    What are the odds that archive.org will be around in 137 years? The best bet would be the Library of Congress.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Assuming there will be a technological civilization in 137 years, I give it more than 50% that archive.org will be present in some form directly descendent from the archive.org of today.
      - Nicholas_C 11y ago
        Why 50%?
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Because I don't feel very confident in the result, I just feel it's more likely than not.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    There's a really bad problem with archive.org - that they retroactively apply robots.txt files. Simple: User-Agent: * Disallow: / And poof, here goes history. Guess how many companies care?
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Guess how many companies care? Many. But, more in the way of actively and enthusiastically supporting the ability to wipe the archive this way than, you know, being concerned that it is a problem.
dogma1138 11y ago
That is actually a serious issue that many scientists including historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are actually trying to find ways around. Digital storage is far more fragile than many physical storage mediums, digital data in many cases might also be indistinguishable from random data in such cases where it have been heavily encoded, encrypted, or the mata-data was lost. Time capsules are now becoming more and more important (including us sending one to Mars) because if we blow ourselves up or encounter a calamity that will erase much of modern technology we will lose more data in that instant than all the data lost to history before that. Most modern storage media will not last a century even under good conditions, yet alone under conditions that we've found many historical manuscripts and objects of significance so it's quite important for us to develop a high-density, long term media which can store current information in ways that will be fairly simple to access, micro-film was a good candidate at one time but the information density was too small, so allot of people are working on more high density storage media including crystals, and even encoding allot of information into DNA, if you can turn an entire forest into a time capsule you might be able to preserve knowledge for a very very long time.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  > if you can turn an entire forest into a time capsule you might be able to preserve knowledge for a very very long time. I do like the idea that the information would be self-propagating, but who'd think to look in the DNA of some trees?
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Future humans that knew about it, future humans that had to rediscover DNA, evolved intelligent racoons, Eloi, Morlocks, aliens take your pick. The idea is just to have some way to ensure that enough information survives in persistent forms, you can store "important" (for scientific advancement) stuff in various types of media which is progressively harder to access and gets more and more dense, and eventually store everything and it's mother in DNA or anything similar. As things go if in 50 years we lose Google, Wikipedia, Facebook and Amazon/Kindle we might be on our way back to the stoneage.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
The realization of just how fragile the Internet is scares me. It's even more ephemeral than personal digital storage. Keep in mind, your typical hard drive in a data centre wears down after 3 to 5 years, maybe less, and has to be replaced. Everything we store on-line exists only because of steady and flowing manufacturing and supply of new hard drives.

Of all the photos being taken right now, it's odd to think there probably won't be discoveries of old photos in junk shops in 2150.

by pgrote 11y ago

Of all the photos being taken right now, it's odd to think there probably won't be discoveries of old photos in junk shops in 2150.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

fn42 11y ago

"Hard drive from junk shop found to be from an old facebook server" I do wonder how digital archiving will work in the future. Hopefully something better than "the archive.org volunteers decided to archive it"

valarauca1 11y ago
You tell archive.org how often to archive a URL. So its not really up to their volunteers but the general population.
- stevewilhelm 11y ago
  What are the odds that archive.org will be around in 137 years? The best bet would be the Library of Congress.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Assuming there will be a technological civilization in 137 years, I give it more than 50% that archive.org will be present in some form directly descendent from the archive.org of today.
    - Nicholas_C 11y ago
      Why 50%?
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Because I don't feel very confident in the result, I just feel it's more likely than not.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  There's a really bad problem with archive.org - that they retroactively apply robots.txt files. Simple: User-Agent: * Disallow: / And poof, here goes history. Guess how many companies care?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Guess how many companies care? Many. But, more in the way of actively and enthusiastically supporting the ability to wipe the archive this way than, you know, being concerned that it is a problem.

dogma1138 11y ago

That is actually a serious issue that many scientists including historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are actually trying to find ways around. Digital storage is far more fragile than many physical storage mediums, digital data in many cases might also be indistinguishable from random data in such cases where it have been heavily encoded, encrypted, or the mata-data was lost. Time capsules are now becoming more and more important (including us sending one to Mars) because if we blow ourselves up or encounter a calamity that will erase much of modern technology we will lose more data in that instant than all the data lost to history before that. Most modern storage media will not last a century even under good conditions, yet alone under conditions that we've found many historical manuscripts and objects of significance so it's quite important for us to develop a high-density, long term media which can store current information in ways that will be fairly simple to access, micro-film was a good candidate at one time but the information density was too small, so allot of people are working on more high density storage media including crystals, and even encoding allot of information into DNA, if you can turn an entire forest into a time capsule you might be able to preserve knowledge for a very very long time.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
> if you can turn an entire forest into a time capsule you might be able to preserve knowledge for a very very long time. I do like the idea that the information would be self-propagating, but who'd think to look in the DNA of some trees?
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Future humans that knew about it, future humans that had to rediscover DNA, evolved intelligent racoons, Eloi, Morlocks, aliens take your pick. The idea is just to have some way to ensure that enough information survives in persistent forms, you can store "important" (for scientific advancement) stuff in various types of media which is progressively harder to access and gets more and more dense, and eventually store everything and it's mother in DNA or anything similar. As things go if in 50 years we lose Google, Wikipedia, Facebook and Amazon/Kindle we might be on our way back to the stoneage.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

The realization of just how fragile the Internet is scares me. It's even more ephemeral than personal digital storage. Keep in mind, your typical hard drive in a data centre wears down after 3 to 5 years, maybe less, and has to be replaced. Everything we store on-line exists only because of steady and flowing manufacturing and supply of new hard drives.