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This article seems a little bit overwrought. I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations

This article seems a little bit overwrought. I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations to come." Sure, there are apps that will probably get deleted that don't deserve to. But when you play in the walled garden, these are the consequences.

zzalpha 9y ago
I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations to come." Imagine people had said that same with old DOS games? The article makes a very valid point regarding digital preservation. The same argument is often made regarding the dangers of DRM or other proprietary data and storage formats.
coldtea 9y ago
>This article seems a little bit overwrought. I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations to come." Plus, if that was our actual concern, we had TONS of other stuff to help preserve first: digitize all kinds of old books, movies and music and make it available for example. iOS apps would be at the very bottom of the cultural landscape for things that would be missed (and the nature of technology is not such that those are meant to be evergreen artifacts anyway... nobody much cares that we can't play ZX Spectrum games easily for example).
- kenshi 9y ago
  You can't really rank or prioritise what cultural artefacts are going to be missed. It's such a subjective thing. For example, whilst I enjoyed many retro games back in the day, I can't say I am too bothered about not being able to play them. But there are many people who would care, and value these things highly. And there are certainly old apps I do care about for other reasons: perhaps they had a novel interface or solved certain problems in an elegant manner. For example, I would love to be able to easily play around with the software designed by Kai Krauze. With art and culture, everything is subjective. One person's high art is another person's trash.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >You can't really rank or prioritise what cultural artefacts are going to be missed. It's such a subjective thing. What people going to miss is subjective. What they should miss is objective. Or rather, is a subjective decision they don't get to make for themselves. In the end, everything, even morals, are subjective. But in the end, also, most societies agreed collectively in some prioritisation, despite what each individual (or even the majority) prefers. And unless something drastically changed in how we think about culture, old books and movies and films are more important than some abandoned 32-bit only iOS apps. I guess it's a US thing to think it's all about the individual and its personal taste, but in other cultures at least, there is such a think as a canon, and while it's still fuzzy and subjective at the edges, it's not like spandex wearing superheroes or RPGs ever get as important as The Iliad or some philosophical work, just because the majority got in arrested development sometime in the 90s and prefer the former over the latter.
    - kenshi 9y ago
      I cant argue with you that some works are objectively better than others. Or that works in much older media are going to be much more culturally significant than any app. Personally I think the value of (some of) the older apps is how they are waypoints in the progression of software design, specifically for touch screen devices. I view software as an evolving medium (the ultimate meta-medium), and as such think its worth preserving at least some of these artefacts for future study. Perhaps this doesn't count as culture, but I think it's important.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        I agree with you too, after all I'm a software developer myself (and I love my 80's Sierra DOS games). So, it's not like I don't believe that they have some value (ZX games or early iOS apps), but that I made my stand a little more black and white to get my point across. I don't believe most of it is culture to the sense that a book is, mostly because most of them are quite plain, derivate from numerous other apps for other platforms, and driven by basic commercial desires. And of course, a book can be a window in someones mind/thought/philosophy/etc, whereas an app is mostly a utilitarian endeavour (it's like we don't attach much cultural importance to past commercial products, e.g. old tv sets or old fridges or old typewriters -- we might like them as antiques, but that's mostly it). That said, there are also utilitarian reasons for us wanting software to keep existing in some form (to open old documents, etc).
- Razengan 9y ago
  > nobody much cares that we can't play ZX Spectrum games easily for example Speak for yourself. The ZX Spectrum was one of the first "media" I saw and interacted with in this world, before TV, before any books and movies and music that matter to me.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    And yet, I presume that most kids are not playing many (if any) of their childhood games, computer or real life, later on in life, except for the rare nostalgia-trip. And their kids will care even less. Heck, most kids pack those and don't think twice about them when they hit puberty and get interest in the other (or, well, the same) sex. But even so, that's an argument from personal interest (which I think is small), but I was going for an argument of cultural importance (which I think is even smaller).
- 0x0 9y ago
  > can't play ZX Spectrum games easily What are you talking about :) - http://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/ http://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/
pmoriarty 9y ago
Sometimes valuable data is locked away in those apps, and using those apps is the only way to get at it.

zzalpha 9y ago

I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations to come." Imagine people had said that same with old DOS games? The article makes a very valid point regarding digital preservation. The same argument is often made regarding the dangers of DRM or other proprietary data and storage formats.

coldtea 9y ago

>This article seems a little bit overwrought. I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations to come." Plus, if that was our actual concern, we had TONS of other stuff to help preserve first: digitize all kinds of old books, movies and music and make it available for example. iOS apps would be at the very bottom of the cultural landscape for things that would be missed (and the nature of technology is not such that those are meant to be evergreen artifacts anyway... nobody much cares that we can't play ZX Spectrum games easily for example).

kenshi 9y ago
You can't really rank or prioritise what cultural artefacts are going to be missed. It's such a subjective thing. For example, whilst I enjoyed many retro games back in the day, I can't say I am too bothered about not being able to play them. But there are many people who would care, and value these things highly. And there are certainly old apps I do care about for other reasons: perhaps they had a novel interface or solved certain problems in an elegant manner. For example, I would love to be able to easily play around with the software designed by Kai Krauze. With art and culture, everything is subjective. One person's high art is another person's trash.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >You can't really rank or prioritise what cultural artefacts are going to be missed. It's such a subjective thing. What people going to miss is subjective. What they should miss is objective. Or rather, is a subjective decision they don't get to make for themselves. In the end, everything, even morals, are subjective. But in the end, also, most societies agreed collectively in some prioritisation, despite what each individual (or even the majority) prefers. And unless something drastically changed in how we think about culture, old books and movies and films are more important than some abandoned 32-bit only iOS apps. I guess it's a US thing to think it's all about the individual and its personal taste, but in other cultures at least, there is such a think as a canon, and while it's still fuzzy and subjective at the edges, it's not like spandex wearing superheroes or RPGs ever get as important as The Iliad or some philosophical work, just because the majority got in arrested development sometime in the 90s and prefer the former over the latter.
  - kenshi 9y ago
    I cant argue with you that some works are objectively better than others. Or that works in much older media are going to be much more culturally significant than any app. Personally I think the value of (some of) the older apps is how they are waypoints in the progression of software design, specifically for touch screen devices. I view software as an evolving medium (the ultimate meta-medium), and as such think its worth preserving at least some of these artefacts for future study. Perhaps this doesn't count as culture, but I think it's important.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      I agree with you too, after all I'm a software developer myself (and I love my 80's Sierra DOS games). So, it's not like I don't believe that they have some value (ZX games or early iOS apps), but that I made my stand a little more black and white to get my point across. I don't believe most of it is culture to the sense that a book is, mostly because most of them are quite plain, derivate from numerous other apps for other platforms, and driven by basic commercial desires. And of course, a book can be a window in someones mind/thought/philosophy/etc, whereas an app is mostly a utilitarian endeavour (it's like we don't attach much cultural importance to past commercial products, e.g. old tv sets or old fridges or old typewriters -- we might like them as antiques, but that's mostly it). That said, there are also utilitarian reasons for us wanting software to keep existing in some form (to open old documents, etc).
Razengan 9y ago
> nobody much cares that we can't play ZX Spectrum games easily for example Speak for yourself. The ZX Spectrum was one of the first "media" I saw and interacted with in this world, before TV, before any books and movies and music that matter to me.
- coldtea 9y ago
  And yet, I presume that most kids are not playing many (if any) of their childhood games, computer or real life, later on in life, except for the rare nostalgia-trip. And their kids will care even less. Heck, most kids pack those and don't think twice about them when they hit puberty and get interest in the other (or, well, the same) sex. But even so, that's an argument from personal interest (which I think is small), but I was going for an argument of cultural importance (which I think is even smaller).
0x0 9y ago
> can't play ZX Spectrum games easily What are you talking about :) - http://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/ http://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/

pmoriarty 9y ago

Sometimes valuable data is locked away in those apps, and using those apps is the only way to get at it.