Comments on: The disappearing web: Information decay is eating away our history

By: Ariadne Etienne

Ariadne Etienne — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:07:14 +0000

I noticed this problem way back in 1995, which is why I generally download whatever information or even entire site I find useful, when I find it. I insist that the usefulness of the Internet as a tool is severely hampered by the fleeting nature of information stored upon it, and this will not be remedied until such time as public servers (nationalized, if you will) exist, and corporations are put in their place with regard to copyright law, censorship, and denial of service. If one takes a close look at human history its the information which makes us human, it’s our culture, it’s our life blood, and today corporations and near-sited neo fascist governments are chipping away at that.

By: k xan

k xan — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 07:47:32 +0000

I hear what you are saying. To be honest-I like physical books. Old books and new books. As one of my college history professors has said. For information, past books are just as important as newly written. Take three on same subject and read it and see what fits logically so to speak. I held on to that specific idea. I wont forget the importance of an old book and a new author. Theres wisdom to be found in a creative way! I like what you have said above….. ” That’s great if you like real-time content, but there is a not-so-hidden flaw — namely, that you can’t step into the same stream twice, as Heraclitus put it. In other words, much of that information may (and probably will) disappear as new information replaces it, and small pieces of history wind up getting lost. According to a recent study, which looked at links shared through Twitter about news events like the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East, this could be turning into a substantial problem.

By: John

John — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 14:08:46 +0000

I wonder when this article itself will disappear.

By: FredMark

FredMark — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 08:35:18 +0000

Hitachi hopes to bring a new data storage system to the market by 2015. The technique uses a laser to etch data onto four layers of quartz glass, which is extremely durable to water and heat.
http://qz.com/7918

By: Kirsten Lambertsen

Kirsten Lambertsen — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:53:12 +0000

Yes, they did. That IFTTT recipe will soon be deleted.

By: Rap Tor

Rap Tor — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:30:57 +0000

“Disappearing Web: Information decay is eating away our history”
So, who’s to blame? Archivist; reposting; error corrections; historical revisionists?
Not clear on the metrics/methods used to discover this trend but this is interesting and convincing reading.

By: Warren Whitlock

Warren Whitlock — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 04:52:04 +0000

You are so right. The information has not disappeared. We live in an era where vastly more is recorded than ever before.

Even today, most conversations are not recorded, but many more are.

And the presumption here appears to be that a broken link means the data is gone? That’s just not how it works. Old links that lead to a “file not found” error often leave easy clues to where that data is. It could have been removed (a better word than “disappeared”) but quite likely that redirects changed, or a page file was relabeled and still exists on a drive somewhere. A few seconds search with the clues from the social media post and some common sense will find the source quite often.

By: D.R. Bartlette

D.R. Bartlette — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:03:35 +0000

While you’re right that verbal conversations were lost, in the past people *wrote* things, like letters home from a soldier, lengthy essays reprinted in handouts or pamphlets, etc., etc. These are what historians refer to as “primary sources,” the actual accounts of people who were actually there, which is used to piece together a (hopefully) accurate and nuanced history. Now that nearly all our interactions are digital, these primary sources are drying up, and that does create a problem for future historians.

By: tinyvox

tinyvox — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 07:04:01 +0000

Didn’t Twitter just shut that firehose down though?

By: Hitesh Bagchi

Hitesh Bagchi — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 03:00:35 +0000

Just that now we are capable of storing tera/exa/zeta bytes of data should we really store all of them ? Or should we look at storing only the really important ones ? However, how do we decide what is important now ? Well we can argue for both sides. On one side, much of Twitter data is temporal and devoid of any information. It’s often just like our daily casual conversations. Even though technology exists we still do not record every moment of our life. We choose life events _to record judiciously. On the other side, it is impossible to predict now how the data will be used in the future. So let us store it all. Technology will surely provide us enough computing power to process zetabytes in seconds.