British Library wants to preserve web content for history

[Mysturji]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8535384.stm
Someone should start a petition or something.
And point out that there's only 27 left until RDF is gone forever.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8535384.stm
Someone should start a petition or something.
And point out that there's only 27 left until RDF is gone forever.

Indeed.

Online information has one big advantage, and one big disadvantage.

The big advantage is that copies can be made of it at the click of a button, and transferred/stored/backed-up onto computers/memory storage devices in multiple locations across the globe.

The big disadvantage is that any single copy of a piece of data is much more vulnerable to accident/deliberate sabotage than past forms of recorded information were. If you want to destroy writing/hieroglyphics carved into stone it either takes dynamite, or some long and hard chiseling. If you want to destroy old clay tablets, you first need to know where they are. If you want to destroy parchments/scrolls/books/ other paper records, you at least need to go to the effort of making a fire.
But electronic data? All it takes (once again) is the click of a button and it vanishes into the ether. Or else it only takes a computer virus, or a power surge, or an EM pulse or even just a type of data-storage device becoming obsolete.
For similar obvious reasons, this data is far more vulnerable to being lost in the event of a civilisation collapse, than the written/carved data of past ages.


We are losing priceless historical data all around us every day. If an earlier civilisation displayed such a cavalier attitude towards it's historical records, we'd think they were nuts.

[ED209]

Ah, but we live in a world of infinite data redundancy, at least for the important stuff. Aren't google's caches permanent, or at least, they haven't started deleting the old data yet? They're probably way ahead of the British Museum.

In any case amateur geneologists in a couple of hundred will be able to dig up everything about their 21st century ancestors by looking back through backups and caches, so be nice to everyone

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...In any case amateur geneologists in a couple of hundred will be able to dig up everything about their 21st century ancestors by looking back through backups and caches, so be nice to everyone

That's assuming there isn't some major technological setback between now and then, and that they are able to boot-up and retrieve data from 200 year-old computers.

The fact is that as things stand, if there were to be a major collapse of civilisation tomorrow, the archaeologists of the future would have more records available to them from the ancient Egyptians then from the early 21st century.


Stuff carved in stone outlasts stuff stored on a hard-drive.

[Valden]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8535384.stm
Someone should start a petition or something.
And point out that there's only 27 left until RDF is gone forever.

Josh and RD should really take a look at that article.

Thanks for sharing!

[Mysturji]

Bump.
For no other reason than to show that I know how to spell "library".