4 ms·

When Our Culture's Past Is Lost in the Cloud

31 points by benbreen 11y ago

cableshaft 11y ago
I'm starting to print things again, in case I ever kick the bucket. I've been preparing video and board game design documents, manuals, diagrams, etc. The idea is to have a digital and physical copy of every personal project I've worked on (and have the rights to). It's going to be in phases. I've got a binder to collect my printed copies of things, but I'm also going to include a usb stick, maybe a disc, which I know could still be made obsolete, but I'll just keep the format up to date as long as possible. And I'm going to try to get physical copies of as many things as possible. Printed personal copies of old, poorly edited manuscripts, etc. Eventually I'd like to compile an ebook of all these documents and print actual books, since those seem to last a lot longer and be passed down more. I just acquired a 40 year old book written by the legendary game designer Sid Sackson the other day. It's a little worn, but still plenty readable, and includes rules and diagrams for several games in there. It's also fun to catch glimpses of his personality in there, considering he's no longer alive. I'm actually trying to get the actual games/books published, too, but that takes time, especially if you're going through traditional means, which I'm still trying to for now. It's not the best solution, but it's what I've currently settled on. Paper still lasts a lot longer than any digital storage medium we've come up with to date. You can also use version control to track changes in your documents too, especially if you're using something like Markdown for formatting. I've got a local Git that I update when I remember, but I'm really bad at both storing the docs in that folder and remembering to make commits. I should probably just set up some sort of daily scheduled commit for that folder.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
maxxxxx 11y ago
I think it's OK if a lot of stuff gets forgotten. Most likely the important stuff will be preserved somehow. Otherwise we'll just keep piling up mundane stuff.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  Anthropologists love mundane stuff. It gives them insight in how people actually lived. Ain't nothing more exciting than some ancient Sumerian transaction logs (http://www.accountingin.com/accounting-historians-journal/volume-11-number-1/the-significance-of-ancient-mesopotamia-in-accounting-history/ http://www.accountingin.com/accounting-historians-journal/vo...) to an anthropologist. Here's some pictures of some of the actual tablets: http://library.brown.edu/exhibits/archive/focus/cuneiform/ http://library.brown.edu/exhibits/archive/focus/cuneiform/
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Mundane stuff is going to be the window to our current time from centuries in the future.
npsimons 11y ago
> More likely, the digital file would come to be erased or rendered unreadable by changes in technical standards. No one likes to admit it, but the solution is simple: 1) Plain ASCII text and 2) Distributed version control.
- justinlardinois 11y ago
  Neither of which is very attractive to most people. The author alluded to it, but domain-specific version control is more likely to capture history, especially since most people don't know it exists. Recent versions of Word, for example, record old versions, so we've got that, if we can still read Word documents.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
I have a small book that was brought across the country by an 8 year old girl in a wagon train in 1848. My grandmother gave it to me when I was a kid and I believe the girl was a relative. Nothing quite matches holding a physical artifact like an old book. For digital artifacts: I eventually release my more recent books as free PDFs and is is a good feeling to think that a few copies might still be looked at sometime in the future.

31 points by benbreen 11y ago

I'm starting to print things again, in case I ever kick the bucket. I've been preparing video and board game design documents, manuals, diagrams, etc. The idea is to have a digital and physical copy of every personal project I've worked on (and have the rights to). It's going to be in phases. I've got a binder to collect my printed copies of things, but I'm also going to include a usb stick, maybe a disc, which I know could still be made obsolete, but I'll just keep the format up to date as long as possible. And I'm going to try to get physical copies of as many things as possible. Printed personal copies of old, poorly edited manuscripts, etc. Eventually I'd like to compile an ebook of all these documents and print actual books, since those seem to last a lot longer and be passed down more. I just acquired a 40 year old book written by the legendary game designer Sid Sackson the other day. It's a little worn, but still plenty readable, and includes rules and diagrams for several games in there. It's also fun to catch glimpses of his personality in there, considering he's no longer alive. I'm actually trying to get the actual games/books published, too, but that takes time, especially if you're going through traditional means, which I'm still trying to for now. It's not the best solution, but it's what I've currently settled on. Paper still lasts a lot longer than any digital storage medium we've come up with to date. You can also use version control to track changes in your documents too, especially if you're using something like Markdown for formatting. I've got a local Git that I update when I remember, but I'm really bad at both storing the docs in that folder and remembering to make commits. I should probably just set up some sort of daily scheduled commit for that folder.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

maxxxxx 11y ago

I think it's OK if a lot of stuff gets forgotten. Most likely the important stuff will be preserved somehow. Otherwise we'll just keep piling up mundane stuff.

cableshaft 11y ago
Anthropologists love mundane stuff. It gives them insight in how people actually lived. Ain't nothing more exciting than some ancient Sumerian transaction logs (http://www.accountingin.com/accounting-historians-journal/volume-11-number-1/the-significance-of-ancient-mesopotamia-in-accounting-history/ http://www.accountingin.com/accounting-historians-journal/vo...) to an anthropologist. Here's some pictures of some of the actual tablets: http://library.brown.edu/exhibits/archive/focus/cuneiform/ http://library.brown.edu/exhibits/archive/focus/cuneiform/
pjmlp 11y ago
Mundane stuff is going to be the window to our current time from centuries in the future.

npsimons 11y ago

> More likely, the digital file would come to be erased or rendered unreadable by changes in technical standards. No one likes to admit it, but the solution is simple: 1) Plain ASCII text and 2) Distributed version control.

justinlardinois 11y ago
Neither of which is very attractive to most people. The author alluded to it, but domain-specific version control is more likely to capture history, especially since most people don't know it exists. Recent versions of Word, for example, record old versions, so we've got that, if we can still read Word documents.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I have a small book that was brought across the country by an 8 year old girl in a wagon train in 1848. My grandmother gave it to me when I was a kid and I believe the girl was a relative. Nothing quite matches holding a physical artifact like an old book. For digital artifacts: I eventually release my more recent books as free PDFs and is is a good feeling to think that a few copies might still be looked at sometime in the future.