when they burned the library of Alexandria the crowd cheered in horrible joy. They understood that there was something older than wisdom, and it was fire, and something truer than words, and it was ashes
i understand the schadenfreude of watching these awful companies collapse, i really do. i experience it as well. but i can’t help but baulk at how much data is being lost. assuming 99% of it is worthless, that’s still millions of ideas that are lost forever.
a few years ago there were (albeit obviously wrong at the time, but nevertheless) questions about “is this the last generation of archæology? all info is now stored forever on the internet” - and now, countless links go to a facebook page i need to log in to see, or a tweet that’s unreachable because twitter’s ddos’ed itself. years of tech support on reddit, and anonymously uploaded art on imgur. the work web.archive.org and archive.is are doing is invaluable, but it will never be enough.
i want to watch the corporations burn too. but we’re losing something we’ll never get back.
i want to watch the corporations burn too. but we’re losing something we’ll never get back.
This perfectly highlights the precarious situation we are in. We have collectively decided to put A LOT of Internet history on a few centralized places that don’t really care about data as profit, and now it is coming back to bite us in the rear. We will lose a lot of history that we can never easily get back, whether it is deleted, or siloed behind a login/paywall screen.
Take, for example, Twitter burning down. It affects everyone negatively. Think of all the important conversations going on about race, gender, sexuality, and protests and movements, that will be lost to time. Think of all the artist who have posted work on there, only to discover they have to shift to a new platform literally overnight because no one can see their artwork and there is a mass exodus. Think of how good reputable news sources are becoming even more fragmented as reputable, trustworthy actors flee Twitter, turning it into a swamp of misinformation and disinformation.
Now take this scenario, and spread it across all the major sites, keeping in mind how all sites rely on each other to be useful, so damage becomes exponentially worse as more large sites decide to do restrictive policies that trap users and data within their sites. As a result, information cannot travel as freely between boundaries. Now taking into account all the damage that has been done, the Internet won’t be the frontier of possibility and community as it once was, but rather another cash cow, and medium of distribution: it will become like a more interactive version of TV.
I wish we could go back to the mid 2000s/early 2010s era of the Internet…I miss those days…
Sorry for doom ranting a little, it’s just the Internet as a concept is important to me.
I was about to post a snarky comment about how you should link to Cory’s own blog pluralistic.net instead of medium but it seems this article isn’t on pluralistic (yet?)
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i understand the schadenfreude of watching these awful companies collapse, i really do. i experience it as well. but i can’t help but baulk at how much data is being lost. assuming 99% of it is worthless, that’s still millions of ideas that are lost forever.
a few years ago there were (albeit obviously wrong at the time, but nevertheless) questions about “is this the last generation of archæology? all info is now stored forever on the internet” - and now, countless links go to a facebook page i need to log in to see, or a tweet that’s unreachable because twitter’s ddos’ed itself. years of tech support on reddit, and anonymously uploaded art on imgur. the work web.archive.org and archive.is are doing is invaluable, but it will never be enough.
i want to watch the corporations burn too. but we’re losing something we’ll never get back.
This perfectly highlights the precarious situation we are in. We have collectively decided to put A LOT of Internet history on a few centralized places that don’t really care about data as profit, and now it is coming back to bite us in the rear. We will lose a lot of history that we can never easily get back, whether it is deleted, or siloed behind a login/paywall screen.
Take, for example, Twitter burning down. It affects everyone negatively. Think of all the important conversations going on about race, gender, sexuality, and protests and movements, that will be lost to time. Think of all the artist who have posted work on there, only to discover they have to shift to a new platform literally overnight because no one can see their artwork and there is a mass exodus. Think of how good reputable news sources are becoming even more fragmented as reputable, trustworthy actors flee Twitter, turning it into a swamp of misinformation and disinformation.
Now take this scenario, and spread it across all the major sites, keeping in mind how all sites rely on each other to be useful, so damage becomes exponentially worse as more large sites decide to do restrictive policies that trap users and data within their sites. As a result, information cannot travel as freely between boundaries. Now taking into account all the damage that has been done, the Internet won’t be the frontier of possibility and community as it once was, but rather another cash cow, and medium of distribution: it will become like a more interactive version of TV.
I wish we could go back to the mid 2000s/early 2010s era of the Internet…I miss those days… Sorry for doom ranting a little, it’s just the Internet as a concept is important to me.
I was about to post a snarky comment about how you should link to Cory’s own blog pluralistic.net instead of medium but it seems this article isn’t on pluralistic (yet?)
Week later edit: it got posted to pluralistic finally.