Headline, July 07 2022/ ''' '' INTERNET ARCHIVES INTEGERS '' '''

''' '' INTERNET ARCHIVES 

INTEGERS '' '''

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EVERY TECHNOLOGICAL revolution entails a loss. Socrates warned in Plato's '' Phaedrus '' that the invention of writing destroyed memory, making people ''hearers of many things'' who ''will have learned nothing.''

More recently, the typewriter enabled production of far more paperwork, raising profound anxieties  about the number of lost, displaced and missing documents.  

Today's digital societies echo these historic patterns of loss, neglect and entropy. But new actors and dynamics have also entered the stage. Public spheres now exist precariously at the mercy of social media companies.

And each day, corporations like Amazon, Alphabet and Meta extract and assetize our data, stockpiling it and monetizing it under dubious consent structures.

The fact that crucial decisions about whether to keep or destroy data are kept in the hands of actors with profit motives, autocratic aspirations or other self-serving ends has a huge implication not only for individuals but also for the culture at large.

Many instances of data loss have ramifications for cultural production, the writing of history and, ultimately, the practice of democracy.

THE WORLD'S DIGITAL MEMORY IS AT RISK. INTERNET archives hold humanity's collective memory. We must prioritize their preservation.

A constant hum drones out of a former church in San Francisco. It is the sound, from hundreds of fans cooling hundreds of computer servers, of the digital past being kept alive. This is the Internet Archive, the largest collection of archived web pages in the world and a constant reminder of the fragility of our digital past.

It is also, thanks to a March ruling in a U.S.federal court, which found that the archive's leading practices violate publishers' rights, just one battlefield in a growing struggle that will define how humanity's collective digital memory is owned, shared and preserved - or lost forever.

AS A SCHOLAR OF Digital Data, I know that not all data loss - the corrosion and destruction of our digital past - is tragic. But much data loss today occurs in ways that are deeply unjust and that have monumental implications for both culture and politics.

Few nonprofit organizations or publicly backed digital libraries are able to operate at the scale needed to truly democratize control of digital knowledge. Which means important decisions about how these issues play out are left to powerful, profit driven corporations or political leaders with agendas.

Understanding these forces is a critical step toward managing, mitigating and ultimately controlling data loss, and with it, the conditions under which our societies remember and forget.

From streaming platforms removing digital-only shows from their libraries to governments defunding their national library systems to the effects of tech centralization, data is disappearing at alarming rates.

BREWSTER KAHLE, Internet Archive's founder, told me that thanks to government pressure or simply error, data is often subject to large-scale erasure. For webpages that have been wiped clean, the Internet Archive is often the only place to look.

Traditional publshers brought the suit against the archive because of its practice of lending, for short periods, scans of their books [including, to authors' dislike, recently published titles].

The court ruled that the archive must stop lending copyright books. An appeal is in the works, but if the court ruling is upheld, it could seriously undermine the ability of the archive and similar bodies to defend public access to information against the encroachment of privately held platforms, according to Mr. Kable.

To sum up, Museums, Libraries and other institutions must play a more proactive role.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Data, Internet and Archiving, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Nanna Bonde Thyistrup for her Opinion.

With respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of The World Students Society, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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