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The Internet Is Failing The Website Preservation Test (archive.ph)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This is something that keeps me worried at night. Unlike other historical artefacts like pottery, vellum writing, or stone tablets, information on the Internet can just blink into nonexistence when the server hosting it goes offline. This makes it difficult for future anthropologists who want to study our history and document the different Internet epochs. For my part, I always try to send any news article I see to an archival site (like archive.ph) to help collectively preserve our present so it can still be seen by others in the future.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think it's a problem. If everything or most of internet would be somehow preserved, future antropologists would have explonentially more material to go through, which will be impossible. Unless the number of antropologists grows exponentially, similarily how internet does. But then there's a problem, if the amount of antropologists grow exponentially, it's beceause the overall human population grows exponentially. If human population grows exponentially, then also its produced content on internet grows even more exponentialier.

You see, the content on the internet will always grow faster than the discipline of antropology. And it's nothing new - think about all the lost "history" that was not preserved and we don't know about. The good news is that the most important things will be preserved naturally.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

the most important things will be preserved naturally.

I believe this is a fallacy. Things get preserved haphazardly or randomly, and "importance" is relative anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

In addition, who decides "importance"? Currently importance seems very tied to profitability, and knowledge is often not profitable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It is relative, but it only takes one chain of transmission.

AskHistorians on Reddit had an answer about this. Stuff is flimsy but also really easy and cheap to make copies of now.