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Much like the (re)discovery of Absinthe production, I believe a lot of these crafts will be rediscovered and preserved. The difference these days, rather than c

by eksith 13y ago

Much like the (re)discovery of Absinthe production, I believe a lot of these crafts will be rediscovered and preserved. The difference these days, rather than centuries past, is the exceptional amount of documentation and preservation of technique in text (and recently video). There are innumerable resources available today that just wasn't back then so this information will be preserved by and large. We just need to ensure it's carefully curated for young minds to absorb well into the future. Every time I go to a swap meet or a tag sale, the first thing I look for are books. Even old magazines, trade publications and catalogs can reveal a great deal of ingenuity and fascinating technical knowhow. I don't have the time to scan and digitize these (besides, I don't know what the copyright implications would be), but I try to see what learn from these as much as possible. Many of these were limited print to begin with and were summarily discarded once the next seasons' gadgets/appliances came about so they need preservation. I can see prime real-estate for a startup doing something similar. It's a massive job to rebuild a library, but I'll gladly pay a subscription fee to get access to all these treasures.

Amadou 13y ago
It's a massive job to rebuild a library, Building it is only a fraction of the effort. Maintaining it is where it gets exceptionally hard. Until very recently we had a system in the US - most worthwhile ideas made it into print and as part of registering for copyright, at least one copy of the book was sent to the Library of Congress for archiving. But the internet has made knowledge ephemeral and there isn't any formal system for preserving knowledge anymore. We've got places like the wayback machine, which is great, but isn't anywhere near the kind of capacity we need AND it is fragile too. Unlike books, the media we use rapidly becomes obsolete. Most storage formats from 30 years ago are extremely difficult to read today because the hardware is so rare. The guys at the wayback machine, project gutenberg and others are working on the problem but the scope is just so absolutely enormous that its basically impossible. It is a certainty that this start of "internet age" is going to be a black hole in history a couple of centuries down the line. Nearly everything we do and say online is going to be forgotten at unprecedented levels. We need an NSA - National Storage Agency - dedicated to archiving the knowledge and culture expressed on the internet instead of practically meaningless "metadata."

by eksith 13y ago

Amadou 13y ago

It's a massive job to rebuild a library, Building it is only a fraction of the effort. Maintaining it is where it gets exceptionally hard. Until very recently we had a system in the US - most worthwhile ideas made it into print and as part of registering for copyright, at least one copy of the book was sent to the Library of Congress for archiving. But the internet has made knowledge ephemeral and there isn't any formal system for preserving knowledge anymore. We've got places like the wayback machine, which is great, but isn't anywhere near the kind of capacity we need AND it is fragile too. Unlike books, the media we use rapidly becomes obsolete. Most storage formats from 30 years ago are extremely difficult to read today because the hardware is so rare. The guys at the wayback machine, project gutenberg and others are working on the problem but the scope is just so absolutely enormous that its basically impossible. It is a certainty that this start of "internet age" is going to be a black hole in history a couple of centuries down the line. Nearly everything we do and say online is going to be forgotten at unprecedented levels. We need an NSA - National Storage Agency - dedicated to archiving the knowledge and culture expressed on the internet instead of practically meaningless "metadata."