Some of our culture is recorded daily in the images taken by those who experience it. Most of those images are vanishing just as rapidly when memory cards are lost, phones replaced, or computers die.
However, I believe the OP question is premature. We will have to wait a while to see how long the various forms of big digital media do survive.
No-one is recording daily the research station libraries etc. which are being cleared with abandon.
The ‘daily image recordings’ cover lots, but not nearly all.
We have lost knowledge of important decisions made in the Oval Office.
Historians can listen to Kennedy and his advisors during the Cuban Missile crisis. Johnson’s late night phone calls to members of Congress are a fascinating glimpse into how he used the power of the Presidency.
Yes, there are the Nixon tapes.
That archive of knowledge ended after the courts ruled to make the Nixon recordings available.
It’s frustrating that we were cut off during the Carter and Reagan administrations. Clinton recorded some of his personal thoughts, but they’re not live recordings.
I’ve always felt preserving the historical record is more important than any court case. A court case is a blip in time compared to the work historians can do in the future.
The court case was a momentary victory that ceased to matter after the White House recordings ended.
It is a very dangerous idea to begin having trial courts consider second and third order effects about how the world may react to the ruling on the case at hand.
There was nothing preventing Congress from passing laws requiring all those recordings to continue. They chose not to.
Of course there are lots of laws about preserving White House documents. All of which are being actively flouted by the current criminal regime.
Personal correspondence is the most important record of our culture, and it no longer exists except in digital form.
~Max
Am I correct that the OP’s distinction between analog electronic records and digital electronic records is that in principle the former can be read directly, whereas the latter are 100% dependent on having the right programs and operating systems to interpret them?
nvm
~Max
IMO the most important record of our culture is not any specific physical or digital item. Only a few specific objects, like the entire Wikipedia database, can even begin to approach a record of our culture. But it certainly isn’t the most important record. As above, I think the most important record has been (since the widespread adoption of mail in the 18th century) and continues to be (now in the form of email, text) personal correspondence.
~Max
Geocities is one of the best examples of lost social records. It was active from 1994 to 2009.
The quality of information on the user web pages varied. There were many journals and postings about hobbies. Collectively geocities was a snapshot of the early days of the web and how a wide range of people joined the web and found ways to use it.
I think many pages were abandoned as the people left high school and college.
There was some very interesting pages. I spent many late nights lost, after going down into the rabbit holes.
I may have the only extant 45 rpm recording of “Wild Thing” by Senator Bobby and the Hardly-Worthit Players.
Surely loads and loads of online fora and mailing lists are pretty much gone. Geocities? Where are all the CompuServe forums? That’s like 40 years’ worth of stuff. Not sure if it be an “important record of our culture”.
I remember reading Newbie posts after somebody signed up for Compu Serve or AOL.
Geo Cities had templates that made it easy for anyone to create a personal web site. So many of them were garish with bright colors and blinking fonts.
It’s easy to forget life with only tv, books and newspapers. A lot of people bought their first computer to get access to the internet.
The introduction of the internet was a major cultural shift. It’s going to be studied in the near future.
Anyone remember Friendster?
I’ve been thinking about this, and I think there’s different answers to the question as presented, depending on how one interprets it.
The OP asks:
[quote=“griffin1977, post:1, topic:1021383”]
what is the most important bit of our culture (however you define ‘our culture’ and ‘important’) that only exists in digital form and is no longer physically written down or printed
[/quote]
If we’re limiting ourselves to digital examples, I’ll posit “modern political campaigns.” Example: most of what Trump decrees is either via social media or when blabbing to a group of reporters and / or supporters. Very little of it originates as a physical anything. Obviously, his speeches and tweets can be transcribed and printed on physical media after the fact, but I think this fits the OP’s question – and there’s no denying what Trump says is of vital importance.
Stepping away from the digital realm, the dodo went extinct in 1662, long before photography was a thing. We have no preserved specimens; only skeletons, a single leathery mummified head and one bit of a foot. Thus, all we have for physical references to a dodo’s appearance are drawings and sketches. The same is true for dinosaurs. It’s debatable, of course, how “culturally important” extinct animals are.
However, I think there’s one example that eclipses all others. Today, something like 30% of the world’s population identifies as Christian: that is, followers of Jesus Christ. Yet, we have absolutely zero primary source evidence proving Jesus actually existed. “Evidence” such as bits of the true cross, the Shroud of Turin, and similar examples are spurious at best. The gospels were written no earlier than 70AD, two generations after Jesus’ death and when any still-living witnesses to his ministry were elderly. Thus, we have absolutely no physical record of his existence or his teachings from his lifetime yet some 2.5 billion people adhere to a religion based on his teachings.
I once read or heard that if you put together all the bits of the true cross that are revered in churches all over the world, you’d get a forest of crosses.
One interesting example: the introduction of personal computers and database programs apparently utterly annihilated a manual analog technology that had previously existed.
One of my suppositions is that technologies rarely go extinct — on the global level. Usually someone, somewhere will continue to employ the most ancient technology. There are probably more people making swords by hand now than in the past. On any given weekend in the US there will be a gathering of weekend flint knappers churning out mounds of magnificent arrow heads, using the exact technology of the stone age. Online you can buy new valves for a Stanley steam powered car, or leather parts for a horse drawn buggy, just as you could 100 years ago. In some parts of Africa and Asia any ancient tool is still manufactured in ancient ways. It is hard to find an old technology that is not available in any form any where on earth.
But today I may have found one.
(…)
But prescient as it was, and as cool as these cards were, I searched the Net today for any sign of InDecks and was surprised to find no sellers on eBay, no fan sites, no collector sites, no historical web pages, and no evidence that anyone is still using them. They are gone. Blasted out by the first computers. Bruce Sterling lists them in his Dead Media file, a catalog of defunct media devices and platforms. They seem to be verifiably extinct.
Try buying an original Palm Pilot that still works. Good luck with that.
How many copies of the original 1977 “Han shot first” release of Star Wars still exist?
The only one I know of is between my ears.
I have a set of original Star Wars trilogy on VHS and a set of special addition on VHS. Don’t know if they are still good, they have been inside a cabinet under the TV for decades since last viewed. I also have a couple working VCRs.