Comments on: Rushdie’s digital decay http://blog.longnow.org/2010/03/17/rushdies-digital-decay/ The Official Weblog of The Long Now Foundation and Friends Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:43:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Markus G. http://blog.longnow.org/2010/03/17/rushdies-digital-decay/comment-page-1/#comment-18582 Markus G. Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:40:17 +0000 http://blog.longnow.org/?p=1840#comment-18582 Anything people feel is important enough to preserve will survive in the clouds of computers connected to the internet. Look at Comodore 64 games and songs. They exist on millions of computers world-wide; there exists a wide variety of emulators to play them and technical documents describing in pornographic detail anything you could possibly want to know about the hardware of the commodore 64. It exists because people feel it is important; you could not even stamp it out if you decided to enforce copyright laws judiciously for such old works. Things people don't care about will suffer from bit-rot and eventually go extinct as the last remaining copies become unrecoverable. This is perfectly fine; not everything about anything needs to be stored, just the stuff people care about. Anything people feel is important enough to preserve will survive in the clouds of computers connected to the internet.

Look at Comodore 64 games and songs. They exist on millions of computers world-wide; there exists a wide variety of emulators to play them and technical documents describing in pornographic detail anything you could possibly want to know about the hardware of the commodore 64.

It exists because people feel it is important; you could not even stamp it out if you decided to enforce copyright laws judiciously for such old works.

Things people don’t care about will suffer from bit-rot and eventually go extinct as the last remaining copies become unrecoverable. This is perfectly fine; not everything about anything needs to be stored, just the stuff people care about.

]]> By: Jenn http://blog.longnow.org/2010/03/17/rushdies-digital-decay/comment-page-1/#comment-18478 Jenn Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:50:36 +0000 http://blog.longnow.org/?p=1840#comment-18478 Thank you for this post. "Mediated Memories in the Digital Age" by José van Dijck is another fascinating strand of this conversation. Van Dijck explores how old and new media technologies shape acts of memory. The book was first recommended to me by one of my profs at the San Francisco Art Institute - a really interesting read. Thank you for this post. “Mediated Memories in the Digital Age” by José van Dijck is another fascinating strand of this conversation. Van Dijck explores how old and new media technologies shape acts of memory. The book was first recommended to me by one of my profs at the San Francisco Art Institute – a really interesting read.

]]> By: Clayton http://blog.longnow.org/2010/03/17/rushdies-digital-decay/comment-page-1/#comment-18420 Clayton Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:16:08 +0000 http://blog.longnow.org/?p=1840#comment-18420 This is always an interesting problem. Some time ago I working for a weekly news publication. All the past issues were backed up digitally but in an enormous range of formats. There were Syquest drives, JAZ, ZIP, Magneto-Optical, 3.5 inch floppys; it seemed they had an "elephant's graveyard" of obsolete media. There was a room filled with systems that were kept in inventory simply to read old disk formats. It was a miniature version of the Computer History Museum, a dusty timeline of hardware and software development. I became somewhat adept at troubleshooting data transfers from old to new systems. In theory it was hoped that these things would be migrated to newer media, but in reality with deadlines and budget priorities it was never feasible. Ultimately paper won out for archival purposes. When a reporter needed to get an old story they just went down to the basement storage area and dug through the shelves for the few copies we kept of each printed edition. And there's the time I worked at an ad agency that used a proprietary digital archiving system for all their digital archives. The archive software became obsolete with an OS upgrade and they ended up with 100's of CDs with mysterious numbers on the envelopes. But that's another story... This is always an interesting problem. Some time ago I working for a weekly news publication. All the past issues were backed up digitally but in an enormous range of formats. There were Syquest drives, JAZ, ZIP, Magneto-Optical, 3.5 inch floppys; it seemed they had an “elephant’s graveyard” of obsolete media. There was a room filled with systems that were kept in inventory simply to read old disk formats. It was a miniature version of the Computer History Museum, a dusty timeline of hardware and software development. I became somewhat adept at troubleshooting data transfers from old to new systems. In theory it was hoped that these things would be migrated to newer media, but in reality with deadlines and budget priorities it was never feasible. Ultimately paper won out for archival purposes. When a reporter needed to get an old story they just went down to the basement storage area and dug through the shelves for the few copies we kept of each printed edition.
And there’s the time I worked at an ad agency that used a proprietary digital archiving system for all their digital archives. The archive software became obsolete with an OS upgrade and they ended up with 100′s of CDs with mysterious numbers on the envelopes. But that’s another story…

]]> By: Matt Warren http://blog.longnow.org/2010/03/17/rushdies-digital-decay/comment-page-1/#comment-18419 Matt Warren Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:55:05 +0000 http://blog.longnow.org/?p=1840#comment-18419 Great find. Thanks for sharing this. I'm impressed with the Rushdie Museum's attempt to recreate the working environment of the authors. That's a great way to convey more "period" to their work. Great find. Thanks for sharing this. I’m impressed with the Rushdie Museum’s attempt to recreate the working environment of the authors. That’s a great way to convey more “period” to their work.

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