Wayback Machine is woefully incomplete and stored on one cluster of servers–if it goes (and it’s been down frequently) the info is gone. It doesn’t compare to having “backup copies” in 500 locations. CNN is a cherry-picked example, too–they are very good at never deleting or reorganizing anything. Most other news outlets take stories down from their original URL after thirty days or so.
The thing that frequently frustrates me is when I find an old post or article, and then any pictures, diagrams or links are either gone or invalid. It’s like digital archaeology in a way.
The claim was that in the future (say, 200 years) it will be harder to find accurate news about today than about 1980. I think that is complete hogwash unsupported by evidence.
It will likely be very easy to find today’s daily newspaper from most major cities in the future. Finding 1980s stories will require finding a library that still has archival copies on microfiche or something. Certainly possible, but nowhere near as easy. And that’s without taking into account that today’s newspapers are being archived the same way (and more comprehensively - see Digital Resources - Foreign Newspaper Collections at the Library of Congress - Research Guides at Library of Congress).
CNN may be cherry-picked, but if there were a CNN in the Dark Ages they wouldn’t be called that.
Most newspapers and magazines are backed up on pay databases and don’t go away forever. But because of the database, the vast microfilm and paper archives that libraries used to keep is gone. And what happens when the database server is in the same office building as the target of the next terrorist attack or hurricane? Data is more ephemeral today because we are NOT taking advantage of the easy distributed backup capabilities of electronic information.
A lot of sites are mirrored though, and a lot of sites are fault tolerant, with off site mirroring and archival storage. Storage space is actually getting cheaper, and offsiting costs are coming down. And with everything going to VMs these days, it’s pretty easy to mirror your site with backups of your VMs and data, and then spin them up quickly in the event of a disaster. The data and systems are becoming more and more disassociated with the hardware, and freer and freer to move all over the place.
Short of an apocalypse that takes down our entire society and infrastructure I don’t see us losing anything close to the knowledge and data that was lost during the real Dark Age, where in Europe at least the ‘forgot’ how to even build or maintain the sewer systems and water distribution systems, let alone the myriad other things they lost.
Yes, in theory this is true. We have the capability to do all of these things. But we don’t actually do them. Pick up any scholarly book from 1965 and try to follow the first five endnotes–you’ll find them all in your nearest university library and probably on Google Books, too. Go to a webpage from 2011 and try to follow five links–they’re not there. Where are they? Even if you had infinite access to the backups and pay services of every web server in the world, would you even know where to look? This is lost information.
Sure, but it’s not on par with the systemic loss of information consummate with an actual ‘Dark Age’. There is simply so much information, and it’s increasing so rapidly, that there are bound to be losses. You are right…you simply can’t back up everything. But technology is making is such that a single site failure doesn’t have to mean catastrophic loss anymore, and the technology is coming down in price and is so available that sites that don’t do this are going to be the ones behind the curve in the next few years. We are looking at just such systems, not only to back up or large amount of data, but to provide continuity of service in the event of a failure. We will be able to spin up any of our VMs offsite and tie it into our archived and backed up data in a matter of hours, and run all our systems through offsite facilities. That’s the goal, and it’s certainly attainable, even on our modest budget. I have no personal knowledge of Google’s various facilities these days, but I imagine they are even more fault tolerant, with myriad fail over sites and backups and archival of their data not just across the country but across the world.
Why do you think that current newspapers are not being archived? They are, in greater amounts and with greater redundancy than ever.
You can read about the LOC’s newspaper collection policies here: Newspapers: Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room (Serial and Government Publications Division, Library of Congress)
And? “More susceptible” does not mean “will definitely become inaccessible.” Many MANY webpages are still accessible on the Internet. Even some from the mid 90s.
And it’s not like books and magazines disappeared at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000. They are still being published and a record of the 21st century will still be accessible to anyone willing to search through them.
Simple solution to this can be to not let kids use internet and computers\smartphones till they 13-15 yrs old.
:rolleyes::rolleyes:
^^
By that time, kids will get an experience of studying without the distractions of the internet. Internet can be useful in studies, I understand, but they can wait till they are like 14. My 13 yrs old cousin sucks at studies, lacks concentration to study anything, his social behavior is also different from the kids when I was a kid which in my view is because he browses internet all the time from his phone.
As if there’s any point to that. The Internet exists, and research is one of its most practical uses. It would be better to teach kids to use the Internet well and help them learn to sort the wheat from the chaff as well as possible. I don’t see the use of wrapping them in an artificial bubble where they can’t use one of the most powerful tools available, and “teach” them to operate under circumstances that don’t match normal life at all.
They are not in real life going to be researching things by sorting though musty archives or whatever you envision them doing; they’ll use the internet. And they’ll have to learn to deal with those distractions.
correct. but let them mature till they are 14, let them experience and enjoy their childhood, they are not gonna lose *anything *if they don’t use internet till 14.
I first used it after high school, when I was 17 which is still fine but I think too late for the current generation, still can’t say it is any good, exposing a less than 13-14 yrs old kid to the internet…
I realize this is a digression, but I feel I must address the most recent subtopic.
I might agree to a lower limit for cellphone usage, but the Internet?
Really? I have taught about 10 young people between the ages of 6 and 10 how to use the Internet for ‘good rather than evil’. It isn’t just Facebook out there, y’all. There is an amazingly deep well of useful and informative information available and the young people I know are amazed at how the world works and how science can help us understand it. They also learn basic history, literature, art, geography, and so many other things that I can’t even enumerate them. If I had a huge library here in this little rural town where I live, then maybe, just maybe, I could help them learn there, but the efficiency would be quite a chokepoint.
Probably the two factors given plus lack of resources and global warming.
Singapore is not just very capitalist, but it’s under what amounts to a mostly-benevolent (or at least competent) one-party technocratic government. Like you said, it’s a tiny country that is as successful as it is because of accidents of geography and history.
Are you on some sort of quest to resurrect old zombie threads with drive by posts about global warming and the end of the world?? This is like the 5th one I’ve seen you do a drive by to bring back from the dead with exactly the same theme this weekend.
I think these topics are current.
Read a book a few years ago that put forward the theory that when the Berlin wall fell that we needed a new enemy so invented the idea of Global warming, as in Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” And the enemy is now us as in we are the one who is responsibility for the evil in the world.