We're In Danger of Losing Our Memories 398
Hugh Pickens writes "The chief executive of the British Library, Lynne Brindley, says that our cultural heritage is at risk as the Internet evolves and technologies become obsolete, and that historians and citizens face a 'black hole' in the knowledge base of the 21st century unless urgent action is taken to preserve websites and other digital records. For example, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as US president last week, all traces of George W. Bush disappeared from the White House website. There were more than 150 websites relating to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney that vanished instantly at the end of the games and are now stored only by the National Library of Australia. 'If websites continue to disappear in the same way as those on President Bush and the Sydney Olympics... the memory of the nation disappears too,' says Brindley. The library plans to create a comprehensive archive of material from the 8M .uk domain websites, and also is organizing a collecting and archiving project for the London 2012 Olympics. 'The task of capturing our online intellectual heritage and preserving it for the long term falls, quite rightly, to the same libraries and archives that have over centuries systematically collected books, periodicals, newspapers, and recordings...'" Over the years we've discussed various aspects of this archiving problem.
We know... (Score:2, Insightful)
The Internet archive [archive.org] is (or was) meant to help ease this problem.
We also have sites like Furl [furl.net] that allow users to save a page for later.
The Google cache retains the contents of a site for a short time (that is, if it doesn't include noarchive tags)
Visitors to a site always have the option of saving a copy.
The issue isn't necessarily that copies don't exist, it's that there's no structured way that will ensure some copy of everything gets saved.
And when individuals "save" a copy of a website, there's no way that they make their saved copy available for historians to look at later.
The problem of personal archiving, declaring certain archives public, and making such snippets available has not been generally solved.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:3, Insightful)
How much you wanna bet the above post gets a +5 insightful whereas a similar post about Clinton (or god help us, Obama) would get -1 troll?
And yeah, I'll get modded down for pointing this out, but what do I care? Karma: Excellent. I just hope whoever opts to throw a -1 offtopic my way also takes a serious look at the parent. And no, I'm not posting this as AC either.
Like the Copyright Black Hole? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for starters, I keep my memories in my head.. but if you're talking about records and history then I think copyright is a bigger culprit than digitization any day. Most of the culture of the 20th century is unavailable because the copyright holders have carte blanche to suppress it so it doesn't compete with their latest offerings.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:5, Insightful)
People who don't like Bush -- ESPECIALLY people who don't like Bush -- should want all record of him preserved.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:5, Insightful)
Because George Bush managed to fuck up the great economy Clinton left him with
And even if people accept that premise that relates to biased moderations in what way exactly?
because Obama is a visionary and has a fantastic platform
Get back to me in four years before you start spouting about fantastic his platform is. I'm rooting for his success (because we can't afford for him to fail) but I'm not going to call it a "fantastic platform" six days into his administration and I'm growing weary of the worship that surrounds him. And this is coming from someone who campaigned for him.
If you disagree that Bush is a worse president than Clinton was or Obama will be, then it is probably wiser to keep your mouth shut and let the world think you are intelligent rather than removing all doubt.
Translation: If you disagree with me then it is probably wiser to keep your mouth shut, lest I be exposed to competing points of view that might tax my brain and force me to actually think.
Re:FP (Score:4, Insightful)
The niche folks must continue to ensure that minutiae are not forgotten, for those who control the past control the future. Attention span is directly proportional to richness of memory. For fuck's sake, everybody read 1984!
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:2, Insightful)
We KNEW he would be elected
Well, yeah we knew he was gonna get elected. Al Gore ran the shittiest campaign I've ever seen in my voting lifetime -- at least until John Kerry ran four years later. And before anybody starts whining about Florida let me just respond with one word: Tennessee.
Gore lost his own fucking state. If he hadn't managed to do that then Florida would have been a big fat moot point, Kathrine Harris just would have been another ugly chick with too much makeup and nobody would give a damn what Michael Moore thinks. Hell, maybe they could have gotten together and had a love child.
Of course the downside is we wouldn't have gotten to see a good Kevin Spacey movie ;)
Re:who needs archive.org for the white house? (Score:5, Insightful)
The National Archives has versions up of all the Clinton White House pages. Here's one [nara.gov]. I'm sure they'll get around to doing the same for Bush eventually.
They're already ahead of you.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ [archives.gov]
Too much memory == no memory (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to cut down the noise somehow.
We don't need to save every teenager's text message.
I'm not willing to spend a lot of money to preserve my *own* memories. If they think it is so important, then they can kick in some money and free time to do it.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry; his record isn't disappearing anytime soon. There are no media compatibility issues with gravestones and they offer excellent document retention.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:5, Insightful)
but it's not suffering PTSD after being violently beaten up by greedy assholes.
So in which administration do you think passed a lot of the deregulation that enabled those 'greedy assholes'? Which administration passed the Telecommunications Act, the Communications Decency Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
Eventually the wet for Obama crowd is going to wake up and realize that the Democrats are just as big of a threat to our way of life as the Republicans are. Of course by the time that happens everybody will have forgotten about how badly the GOP fucked up and we'll start the whole cycle over again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Re:Like the Copyright Black Hole? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod this up to +11. It's insane how much material has to be archived illegally to keep it intact. Case in point: When Legacy Engineering developed the Atari Flashback 2 for the modern Atari, they had to pull all the ROMs, documents, schematics, and everything else from their own archives. Atari had absolutely none of it.
Similarly, all kinds of software is being lost due to the draconian copyright laws. In fact, two of the titles I remember from my childhood (a Q-Bert ripoff with ice cubes and a lunar lander clone that gained you fuel from answering math problems) are, as far as I can tell, simply lost to history. No one has even documented their existence, much less made a backup for posterity!
Unfortunately, the problem is only getting worse. Movies, television, software, digital texts, and other forms of useful information and cultural entertainment are being lost to time permanently. All because these items fall out of circulation and copyright law prevents enough copies from being kept around to prevent their untimely demise.
That being said, I do realize that not everything can be kept. Hell, I know more than enough historians wish we had even simple documents like tax assessments and census results from the ancient world. Even seemingly stupid stuff like that can be incredibly useful. Never the less, some of this information is simply going to be lost in time. But let's at least make an effort to preserve the works that define our history and culture. You never know. 2000 years from now our descendants may want to piece together what happened to us. ;-)
Re:Too much memory == no memory (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be so sure. One of an archaeologist's favourite places to dig is in the village rubbish tip. It's important because it tells us more about day-to-day life in a society than what people wrote down on papyrus, carved into stone, or otherwise saved for posterity.
In virtually every case, the stuff that rulers deem important doesn't bear much relation to the way everyday people live. Often enough, it's an outright lie. So if we want to understand a society with any depth of detail, we need to know the trivial and mundane as well as the monumental.
Re:Just do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Archive.org may not be willing to archive important sites (such as pr0n), and it only has a single mirror.
Don't worry I'm working on archiving all that porn locally. Eventually I'll combine every single file into one giant torrent and upload at least 99.9% of it before dropping offline ;)
You sir are a great humanitarian.
Re:tv, radio, newspaper, official documents, memoi (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:5, Insightful)
You're seriously comparing the CDA and the DMCA to the likes of the Iraq War, badly handling Katrina, and staffing every position with hacks and cronies? Repubs are demonstrably worse for our country.
I don't buy this "Oh, they're all bad, Dems are just as bad" meme. It's just not factually true.
Re:Like the Copyright Black Hole? (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of it is *not* available. Most books do not see a second print run. There's literally millions of films that never made it to VCR and millions more that never made it to DVD. This is not because people are uninterested in buying them. It's because the copyright holder has the exclusive right to make new copies and they choose not to. It's more profitable for them to print copies of new works for which they can ask a higher price.
Selective Amnesia (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Save CONTENT, not just "links" (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a social benefit, stupid. You just demonstrated the behavior I described. The social benefit incurs an economic cost. There might be some very, very long-term economic benefit, but it's harder to prove. The social benefit is obvious, at least to some of us.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:3, Insightful)
It's still his fault. We KNEW he would be elected. That alone crashed the dot-com bubble.
Why is this being modded as funny? Markets, if at all rational (which is debatable), are based on predictions of changing economic conditions in the future. The fact that an idiot like Bush was even a leading candidate at the time should have served as a harsh warning to smart investors, that things in the U.S. economy might head south real quick. They were right. And just look at all the bumps up the stock market took whenever Obama announced a new appointee anywhere in government finance. The markets obviously pay close attention to politics.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:3, Insightful)
You're seriously comparing the CDA and the DMCA to the likes of the Iraq War,
The CDA was attached to the Telecom Bill that directly led to the Telecom crash. There's certainly bipartisan blame for that one, Republicans may have pushed it through the House and Senate, but impeached ex-President Clinton signed it.
Both groups that the US ended up going to war with in Afghanistan and Iraq had been originally funded by previous administrations (to bipartisan support as the Republicans did not have enough votes to get any bills through congress at the time).
The war in Iraq I agree was petty and a mistake. Son wants to make good on Daddy's mistake. It hasn't turned out as badly as Vietnam did ... yet, but give the current administration some time ...
... and staffing every position with hacks and cronies? Repubs are demonstrably worse for our country.
You must be new here. Bush did the stacking thing a bit less than the previous administration. but that sort of thing is Politics As Usual.
I will not comment on Katrina, there was too much disaster going on where I was living at the time that was being handled quite badly. Hey, I like living on the ring of fire which is subject to earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires (thank you Greenies in CA!) and typhoons depending upon which part you're in. Does that mean I should expect the government to bail me out because I enjoy this part of the world?
I don't buy this "Oh, they're all bad, Dems are just as bad" meme. It's just not factually true.
Hmmm, maybe you *were* born yesterday.
We haven't had an honest and decent President[1] in over a century http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/williamhowardtaft/ [whitehouse.gov] and few people today seem inclined to crack history books. I'm not surprised there's so much ignorance.
[1] Of couse, the reward for being an honest and decent President is retirement after 4 years, sigh.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, imagine that - people are somehow more bitter about the president that just finished 8 years in office than they are about the guy who has been there less than 1 week and has yet to do anything that terrible.
Re:interesting idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Robots.txt is the equivalent of a burn-order in your Last Will and Testament. If the author chooses to have their work left outside of the archive(s), it's entirely the author's fault if it dissapears.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:3, Insightful)
Kennedy died in 1963. U.S. combat units weren't sent into Vietnam until 1965 (after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident). and if Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, it's likely that the United States would have withdrawn from Vietnam completely rather than escalate the conflict.
the Korean war ended in a stalemate (ultimately, the North-South border moved little from where it was in May 1950--though the South did gain a little bit of land). U.S. involvement was again partly the result of the Red Scare, but considering the current state of North Korea compared to South Korea, i think U.S. involvement was ultimately a good thing in this instance. i'm sorry Truman (and Eisenhower) didn't achieve a total victory at the cost of more lives. but this was a war, not a football game. there are more important things than "winning" or "losing"--things like having a just cause, maintaining ethical conduct, and achieving a lasting peace. by seizing an opportunity to end a futile conflict before things escalated into a full-on war with China, Truman served the nation's interest more than he would have by letting MacArthur nuke Korea. Likewise, Eisenhower should be applauded for following through on his campaign promise to end what had become an unpopular war (the head of a democracy carrying out the wishes of his constituency--what a novel idea!).
and are you honestly trying to compare an unprovoked invasion of another nation for oil with fighting a fascist takeover of Europe? i'm just trying to figure out if your blatant sophistry is a desperate attempt to grasp at straws or if you're just that cognitively challenged.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:3, Insightful)
There was the choice of McCain or Obama to get things back under adult supervision. It may not have been the one you wanted but it will be an improvement and there is still congress, the senate and the judicary. The republic you are used to will be restored since the executive branch is not going to act like a monarchy for a very long time (if ever again), so the President will not be the all powerful figure that can make or break everything.
Re:Like the Copyright Black Hole? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's great. Thing about the library of congress, it's in Washington DC. Most people, are not. Compare this to the collected works of Shakespeare or the Bible.. copyright reduces availability.. that's the purpose of copyright, to make something scarce that would otherwise be plentiful, so people can profit off it. Oh, and the promotion of progress or something.. yeah.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:5, Insightful)
Gr... Now I must undo mods...
World War II: Rosevelt (D). (more dead americans than any war in history)
Your comparing our two modern wars to WWII? Please tell me your doing this for mere partisanship, as there is absolutely nothing in common with our current political wars and WWII.
WWII was a war fought over genuine despots, and not just tinpot dictators raised to that level for the sake of political ends. In the case of WWII there was a genuine act of war, a threat to our allies, general geopolitcal stability, and a real genocidal bona fide bad guy. Our current crop of wars lack ALL of these. In WWII there was an ACTUAL threat to the US, a threat that is completely lacking in our current wars.
These wars are poltical only.
I can agree with your complaints against Korea and Vietnam, but comparing WWII to the neocon "Bush doctrine" wars we're in currently is just dumb and fallacious.
Arguably Afghanistan might be just, since the Taliban did INDIRECTLY cause a direct threat, unlike Pearl Harbor and the Japanese incidentally which was a DIRECT threat. I personally think Afghanistan is a good war, as do most nonpartisan analysts, but oddly this is the war we ignore, and proved to be the least of Bush's military priorities.
Iraq is, and was, just dumb, and only motivated by petty political reasons. We had no real reason for being there, outside of purely ideological (and partisan) political reasons. Even Iraq is a bit dumber than our involvement in Vietnam and Korea, since that was at least for BIPARTISAN political idiocy based purely on temporal and fallacious political grounds.
Ignoring war, though GWB was the worst president we have ever had. He did more to dissolve our rights than any president before him (except perhaps Adams). He didn't even have the illusion of ethics, he endorsed torture, exceptionalism (rebranded nationalism), he looked out for his rich cronies in a way that Reagan could only dream of, he killed ALL safety regulation, and generally fought against the majority of Americans as much as possible. I don't understand how ANYONE can like him, he didn't even support his religiously fundamentalist base, much less true fiscal conservatives. Hell even hopeless pure war-for-wars-sake hawks can't like him since he f*'ed up both the wars he decided to start.
Economically, I suppose, he did start a trend some might like, decreasing income and dramatically increasing spending. Perhaps some might even like the idea of a "war against x" where "x" is an unassigned variable. He also popularized the wonderous anti-intellectualism that uneducated idiots love (we can call it populism), where ruling a country by your "gut" is preferable to ruling it by experts, information, and science.
I'm not going to hop on the partisan band wagon here, either. Clinton was a BAD president, as was every modern president we've had since FDR. It isn't a question of "us versus them". that mentality is the problem. We CAN have political differences, we SHOULD have them. You are about as right as I am. Politics are necessarily subjective. When you act as if they are objective, you always act towards tyranny.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:5, Insightful)
Regan and HW spent like drunken sailors, leaving a mess for the next President to pay off. Clinton cut spending, payed off debts, and set things up for tax cuts. Bush spent like a drunken sailor, and gave tax cuts, leaving a mess for the next guy. Damn those nasty big-government tax-and-spend Democrats.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand the Reagan nostalgia one bit. He introduced idiotic SDI program (Starwars), he renewed the cold war (though was fortunate enough to last until its inevitable decline, and thus take credit), he introduced the terrible "trickle down" motivation to focus everything on the rich and deprive the other 70% of the population of any benefits, he decided running government based on religion was a good idea (while his wife gave him astrological advice), and he started the modern idea of "make less spend more" rebranded as "conservationism" (viz "quit your decent job, get one at Taco Bell, and by a Mercedes Benz"). He continued to destabilize most of the world via the CIA, especially Latin America because he personally didn't agree with their popular democratic governments (for the sake of democracy mind, i.e. American interests). He funded most of the people who are now our "greatest enemies", in his wars against Russia.
What the hell was so great about him, except charisma?
This isn't a partisan attack, I also dislike Clinton, both Bushes, Nixon, and most of Carter. Hell, I even preferred the first Bush over Clinton, even if I lean somewhat left. Hell, I even think Kennedy would have been a terrible president. But after Nixon, Reagan was really the guy who led to the presidency being imperial, and the great destroyer of rights. He held lead into the era where we exist for the government, and not the other way around.
Reagan was one of our worst presidents... Besides GWB, of course, who did the most to destroy America, and all that we are founded on.
Unconvincing (Score:3, Insightful)
Because when someone implements a thing poorly, others usually just say "that's been done" or "see? I knew it was a stupid idea." Few will actually spend the time to do it better, certain that they can convince the public their system is superior to the flawed one. Free Software is an exception here, which has been able to keep going, trying to convince people of an alternative, because it's largely independent of individual companies' profit margins.
Re:Like the Copyright Black Hole? (Score:1, Insightful)
That would put a kink in Disney's scam of pulling things from circulation for ten years at a time before releasing them again.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:3, Insightful)
and run away when things get frightening
If you are referring to 9/11 that was the long established plan for what POTUS should do in the event of an attack on our country.
There was the choice of McCain or Obama to get things back under adult supervision. It may not have been the one you wanted but it will be an improvement
Who said I wanted either one of them?
and there is still congress, the senate
You mean the same Congress that rubber-stamped everything GWB did when it was controlled by his party? Sorry, I have zero faith in Congress. Most of them place loyalty to party ahead of loyalty to the constitution and the Democratic Congress will be just as happy to rubber stamp Obama's agenda as the Republican Congress was for GWB.
and the judicary
Well, there's some hope there, although I'm personally growing weary of the activist judiciary that has taken it upon itself to set policy.
since the executive branch is not going to act like a monarchy for a very long time (if ever again)
Ha ha ha ha ha. That's funny. Recall Obama's statement [talkingpointsmemo.com] when he backstabbed us on FISA:
"So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program
Translation: Now that I realize I might actually win this thing, I want these powers for myself in spite of the fact that I was formerly opposed to them. The history of our country is one of every single President since Washington seeking to expand the power of the executive. If you think Obama is going to behave any differently you are in for a rude surprise.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:3, Insightful)
You're seriously comparing the CDA and the DMCA to the likes of the Iraq War, badly handling Katrina
I made no such comparison and you are a jackass for implying that I did. All I did was point out some stupidity on the part of the Democrats. I choose stupidity that most /.'ers would relate to, although I could think of many more pieces of policy stupidity that came out of the Clinton years.
and staffing every position with hacks and cronies?
You mean like Janet Reno?
Repubs are demonstrably worse for our country.
Well, that really depends on your point of view doesn't it? If you take the 2nd amendment seriously then you'd probably disagree with that blanket statement. If you'd prefer to see tax cuts instead of Governmental spending then you'd probably disagree with that blanket statement. I fall somewhere in the middle of all that -- I realize how badly the GOP has fucked up in the last eight years but I have zero confidence that the Democrats will do any better. Whatever faith I had in the messiah^WObama went away when he backstabbed his supporters on FISA. I campaigned for the lying scumbag before that and afterwards couldn't even bring myself to vote for him.
I don't buy this "Oh, they're all bad, Dems are just as bad" meme. It's just not factually true.
If it is you value freedom and liberty and realize that both parties have no interest in either when it conflicts with their agenda.
Re:"All traces of George W. Bush disappeared" (Score:3, Insightful)
How much you wanna bet the above post gets a +5 insightful whereas a similar post about Clinton (or god help us, Obama) would get -1 troll?
I think because it is established, especially amoung above-avarage intelligent people (and I actually *do* count the /. crowd in on that one), that GWB has, in his political career, made some notably hairbrained, dumb and fatal decisions. Despite enough intelligent and well-educated advice to the contrary. Quite often he has not only been inept, he actually has been proactively so and even displayed proudness of it. It may be that GWBs style is compatible with a large section of the US public and that they consider him a 'nice guy' and he may even be, but the facts don't display in favour of his work as the US President. It's very much like with the former Chancelor Helmut Kohl in Germany. Pleasant to be around but sub-par performance as the leader of a Nation.