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But this is also a huge positive for future historians. Imagine the huge amount of data they will have to study what today's society was like. Imagine if we had

by talmand 11y ago

But this is also a huge positive for future historians. Imagine the huge amount of data they will have to study what today's society was like. Imagine if we had such data for the last couple of thousand years.

joosters 11y ago
Historians have had 'too much' data for many decades now. Your photo of the Mona Lisa is probably not going to fill a significant gap in our future understanding of the times.
- ggreer 11y ago
  Often, this supposedly redundant data is useful in ways current society can't fathom. Millions of photos of the Mona Lisa taken over decades won't tell you much new about the Mona Lisa. But it will tell you a lot about changes in camera technology over that time. Also, the long tail is long. There are whole cultures and subcultures that would be completely forgotten if not for archives. At Defcon 19, Jason Scott gave a talk titled Archive Team: A Distributed Presentation of Service Attack[1]. In it, he explains why this data is important. As you rightly point out, the vast majority of it is boring and useless. It matters to no one but the author and their friends. But some of it is weird or funny, and a tiny bit of it is pure historical gold. The early days of usenet, for example, contain tons of interesting conversations involving people who are now prominent. Thanks to these archives, we can get a better picture of these people's lives than in earlier times. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog
- talmand 11y ago
  Maybe, but I bet all those photos the person took while walking to the Mona Lisa might be interesting.
fucking_tragedy 11y ago
This assumes someone will back it up, re-archive it as storage technologies/costs change and then remember how to decode it that long from now.
- talmand 11y ago
  My thought on that is if it becomes that big of a deal to maintain then we likely have bigger issues to deal with on societal level, such as end-of-society type things. Changing archival methods during analog times might have been troublesome, but it has to be getting easier. Hard drive technology can change dramatically but if it interfaces with my current computer then copying files over to it will be trivial.
  - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
    Who is going to pay for it? Who is going to care enough to archive digital artifacts? The Internet Archive is having trouble with their task. Who is going to make sure Grandma's iPhoto album is archived? Things can be put in a box and forgot about for 90 years. Files on digital media probably won't last that long.
    - greglindahl 11y ago
      You almost answered your own question: the Internet Archive already has a lot of stuff, and with more resources, we could do even more. And yes, there are people uploading Grandma's photos already... even home movies. Great stuff, send more!
    - talmand 11y ago
      Seems Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and many others are solving your online storage dilemma as we speak. Of course, there is the question of how historians shall gain access to all that data originally stored for people would be dead by then. I think a law about releasing private data to the public domain after a certain period of time after a person's death, if no living relative to claim it, should be considered. Also, over time storage has just been getting cheaper and cheaper. When I started with computers I couldn't dream of storing the amount of data that I currently store on my phone without thinking twice about it.

by talmand 11y ago

joosters 11y ago

Historians have had 'too much' data for many decades now. Your photo of the Mona Lisa is probably not going to fill a significant gap in our future understanding of the times.

ggreer 11y ago
Often, this supposedly redundant data is useful in ways current society can't fathom. Millions of photos of the Mona Lisa taken over decades won't tell you much new about the Mona Lisa. But it will tell you a lot about changes in camera technology over that time. Also, the long tail is long. There are whole cultures and subcultures that would be completely forgotten if not for archives. At Defcon 19, Jason Scott gave a talk titled Archive Team: A Distributed Presentation of Service Attack[1]. In it, he explains why this data is important. As you rightly point out, the vast majority of it is boring and useless. It matters to no one but the author and their friends. But some of it is weird or funny, and a tiny bit of it is pure historical gold. The early days of usenet, for example, contain tons of interesting conversations involving people who are now prominent. Thanks to these archives, we can get a better picture of these people's lives than in earlier times. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog
talmand 11y ago
Maybe, but I bet all those photos the person took while walking to the Mona Lisa might be interesting.

fucking_tragedy 11y ago

This assumes someone will back it up, re-archive it as storage technologies/costs change and then remember how to decode it that long from now.

talmand 11y ago
My thought on that is if it becomes that big of a deal to maintain then we likely have bigger issues to deal with on societal level, such as end-of-society type things. Changing archival methods during analog times might have been troublesome, but it has to be getting easier. Hard drive technology can change dramatically but if it interfaces with my current computer then copying files over to it will be trivial.
- fucking_tragedy 11y ago
  Who is going to pay for it? Who is going to care enough to archive digital artifacts? The Internet Archive is having trouble with their task. Who is going to make sure Grandma's iPhoto album is archived? Things can be put in a box and forgot about for 90 years. Files on digital media probably won't last that long.
  - greglindahl 11y ago
    You almost answered your own question: the Internet Archive already has a lot of stuff, and with more resources, we could do even more. And yes, there are people uploading Grandma's photos already... even home movies. Great stuff, send more!
  - talmand 11y ago
    Seems Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and many others are solving your online storage dilemma as we speak. Of course, there is the question of how historians shall gain access to all that data originally stored for people would be dead by then. I think a law about releasing private data to the public domain after a certain period of time after a person's death, if no living relative to claim it, should be considered. Also, over time storage has just been getting cheaper and cheaper. When I started with computers I couldn't dream of storing the amount of data that I currently store on my phone without thinking twice about it.