“We are as gods” because of our ancestors’ diligence. The promise of a technologically advancing future is predicated on millennia of accumulated knowledge. Civilization has taken a lot of work to build and it demands a great deal of know-how to sustain. And as modern life increasingly encourages specialization, familiarity across that accumulated knowledge. . .   Read More

From July 17 to September 8 of this year, the New Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is hosting XFR STN (read ‘transfer station’), an “open-door artist-centered media archiving project.”
A collaborative effort by artists for artists, XFR STN is essentially a preservation and migration service for artwork created with or on. . .   Read More

A group of scientists at the University of Southampton is pushing the frontier of long-term data storage technology to a new level. At a recent Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in San José, the researchers announced their success at recording data in quartz glass by using a femtosecond laser.

A femtosecond, or ultrafast. . .   Read More

The Internet Archive seeks to offer universal access to all knowledge.  Jonathan Minard and Deepspeed Media recently created Archive, a short documentary exploring how they’re slowly but steadily achieving this ambitious goal.

Internet Archive from Deepspeed media on Vimeo. . .   Read More

In 02006, Long Now Board Member David Eagleman wrote in Nature: There is no afterlife, but a version of us lives on nonetheless. At the beginning of the computer era, people died with passwords in their heads and no one could access their files. When access to these files was critical, companies could grind to […]

Former SALT speaker Tim O’Reilly recently shared the video of a talk he gave on digital preservation at the Library of Congress in 02011.

Discussing some of his own “personal failures” to archive O’Reilly Media’s early projects, O’Reilly here emphasizes the importance of preserving digital information and resources in a world. . .   Read More

Speaking at TED earlier this year, Long Now co-founder Danny Hillis described the early days of networked computing – a time when one could register “think.com” on a whim and everyone with an email address or a domain could be listed in a single book. He explained that the design of the Internet Protocol and the early […]

With the ever-accelerating evolution of hardware and software, we stand to lose much more than reels of data. A vast collection of computer art risks slipping into digital darkness, as well.

Concerned about this impending loss, NYU student Matthew Epler recently founded the ReCode project: a community-driven effort to create an active archive. . .   Read More

If you’re a fan of this video showing a years’ worth of front pages for NYTimes.com, or the Way Back Machine, which allows you to browse the internet of the past, you might also love a project released by the New York Times today: The TimesMachine.
TimesMachine can take you back to any. . .   Read More

“This is our history, and just a handful of people are saving it.”
— PixelVixen707, screen name of “Rachael Webster,” a fictional character in the alternate reality game Personal Effects: Dark Art

Virtual games are becoming cultural artifacts. Yes, they are commodities, (the global market for video games is forecast to hit $82 billion by 02017. . .   Read More