DigitalEternality
From UoWiki
Q. I was wondering in a vague way about the planned eternality of UO materials. My understanding from reading (probably) various Slashdot discussions (that reliable source of information!) is that anything that has ever been posted on the web will probably hang around for quite a while in various caches, but you can't be sure of it. I have seen it said that you post and let the net take care of looking after what things prove valuable, but it seems a little random.
A. Brewster Kahle's talk at NotCon '04 fleshes out how is working (and might work better in future)
Some links thanks to http://hotales.org and Jonathan Sanderson's blog The Daily Grind.
- Universal access to all human knowledge ("This is an essay of sorts based on Brewster Kahle's speech at NotCon '04 conference.")
- Universal access to all human knowledge video (low quality)
- Universal access to all human knowledge video (high quality)
- Universal access to all human knowledge video (low quality)
[irony of dead link above duly noted...] The uncertainty over the issue--what one might call a deficiency of digital confidence in UO--did inhibit me from authoring content here: I was running my own server, and took responsibility for my own content anyway. I've liked the list, but if it goes down, well, I've got it archived somewhere.
I just checked the wayback machine (18 avril 2008): a search there for the DigitalEternality page yields no results. It may be in there, but a brisk ten minutes of digital furgling there yields nothing. So it's as good as lost if the UO server goes down. UOClimbingClub survives, UORoadClub does not, for example, which is fair in terms of the activity of each, but, well, it's not a faithful archive.
I have a brain disease. When I write stuff that's for the internet: email, web, or wiki, I think really hard about what is true and what I can sustain and defend to the world, and what I have to leave out. This process changes my brain. It affects how I think. I do actually believe my own propaganda because I have to because it **is** what I believe. But I don't remember every detail, and sometimes I like to return to it, and when I can't do that I feel like there is a hole where there should be some lovely content, and the disappointment of the loss leaves a little scar and diminishes my contentment with the world and myself. Because the public content I create is the index in my own brain for the material I have repressed as private, not for current release, embarrassing, taboo, still needs more thought/work, whatever. In other words, it's a very important part of where I'm at.
This sensation, which I believe to be a universal mental phenomenon, is why being a sysadmin is a very responsible position, and if the sysadmin could do only one thing, then backing up would be it. Conversely, stuff which goes down, never to reappear, brings the Orwellian prospect of a society without memory, without history, ever closer, and call me a silly-billy brainwashed Edinburgh liberal boy, but I was brought up to believe that that fantasy was unpleasant, dystopic, and TO BE RESISTED.
That said, I can quite well understand, when one sysadmin feels (s)he'd like a break, that another will have to be found. Or there may be bandwidth bills to be paid. Or the task of carrying the archive put on the shoulders of some more likely eternal host. Which should certainly be discussed if they're issues.
My mind was open: you set it free
I was ready to leave the bourgeiosie
An archive that's for perpetuity
Might risk others follow me?
A mumbling mad, now quite defeated,
who cares not if his past's deleted.
Evanescence! Nothing left to see!
Deceptive screen's un faux ami
