How to avoid digital Middle Ages

Every week, LOOK AT Me publishes a translation of one article by the English -speaking site Hopes & Fears, part of the Look At Media Publishing House. Today's text is about how libraries change under the influence of technology.

Recently, the Vice President of Google and the Father of the Internet, Wydon Surf, warned that the “digital Middle Ages” could come: due to the fact that the methods of storage of data are obsolete, over time there is the danger of this data to lose. Such a prognosis sounds terribly in an era, when digital media overshadowed the printed, search queries of artificial intelligence become more accurate, and in the oldest libraries of the whole world, changes are quietly occurred . But what will happen if we are left without libraries in their classic form? What is the future of libraries and storage of information?

For the safety of the data, they began to fear from the time the Internet. One of the first cases of using the term “digital Middle Ages” occurred in 1998 at the Time and Bits conference organized by Long Now, a fund with a 19-year history that intends to ensure the safety of data for 10,000 years in advance. One of their projects is Rosetta Disk. This archive is a nickel plate with microscopic texts in all languages of the world applied by a relief seal.

Sagintder Singh

Director of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Michigan

“I am sure that artificial intelligence that can maintain a conversation will appear in the next 10 years. My group of researchers creates a system that can answer students' questions, instruct them on the right path and talk about courses at the university. Such systems will only become better over time.

It is funny that many of us are convinced that only a person can do suitable recommendations. Jaron Laner has the book “You are not a gadget” where he writes about it. You may have the impression that books, poetry and people that you like is personal and unique, but if you go to Amazon, you will see that the site, processing some user data, quite accurately predicts what you would like to read. Even in personal things - with whom you would like to meet and what book you would like to read - modern systems can give most people the advice no worse than a person would give.

Libraries continue to change and remain useful. They become a place of meetings of adults, a place where children come to read and draw together, a place where they conduct master classes. They ceased to be only a source of information. People need places where they can physically come, where they can sit surrounded by books and meet people with close interests. Libraries arrange contests among writers - this was what happened before, but now the librarians also teach people how to use new technologies. ”

Maksin Blaivis

Executive Director of the Public Library of Westport in Connecticut

“Humanoid robots Vincent and Nancy appeared in our library. We believe that robotics will become the next area that will penetrate into a variety of areas of life. We already had a similar experience with 3D printers: people who come to us receive knowledge that is mandatory for a modern person. Nancy and Vincent clearly teach people programming. Their appearance itself suggests that libraries remain one of the best places to obtain new knowledge. ”

Ilya Kreimer

Former INTERNET Archive Programmer

“I do not believe that artificial intelligence will replace librarians. Surely there are those who think differently, and perhaps I am naive, but I believe that artificial intelligence cannot do without people's leadership. Especially when we talk about knowledge: if we do not help to navigate in them, this is just a set of meaningless data.

As for digital content, then data storage technologies should not lag behind other technologies. The Internet is becoming more and more interactive, and this interactivity is more difficult to preserve in its original form for the future- the same with streaming audio and video content. We solved some of these problems, but only for a while. When new technologies appear, we may have to start again, because usually those who introduce new technologies do not think about the safety of data for the future.

But, in my opinion, the main problem is the centralization of content. In the 90s, people had their own sites, but now most of the content is located on social networks, where they are controlled centrally. Now you can easily get access to this content, but who knows what will happen in the future? Suddenly it will be removed, or will they close? Internet archive is a wonderful resource, but it is also centralized, which means that it can fall under censorship. The authoritarian mode, what is there, any Internet provider can block access to it (this has already happened in India and Russia. -Approx. Ed.) , And people will not be able to get into one of the largest archives in the world. ”

Laura Welcher

Operating Director of the Long Now Foundation
and project Rosetta

“By training, I am a linguist and for my thesis I documented several languages that are under threat of disappearance. I also worked in a small language archive, where we were given field notes of researchers in the field. There were documented languages that have units of carriers. Sometimes there is nothing left of languages except archival materials.

Everyone who someday holding the only things in their own hands understand how the information is an invaluable and fragile thing. Sometimes I went to archives with books and manuscripts that have no copies. I held these manuscripts in my hands - even before they were digitized - and it seemed to me that they scattered right in my hands.

When you create an archive document for future generations, it is very important to leave “signs”, thanks to which people will be able to find out how to find it, how to extract data from it, as well as that it exists at all. One of these signs in Rosetta Disk is the text surrounded in a spiral surrounding the microscopic archive. The text begins with an easily read Kela, but then it becomes less and less - so people will study the disk more attentively. There are parallel data on different languages on the disk - as on the Rosett stone that helped decipher the writing of ancient Egypt. Another purpose of the disk is to show how many languages exist at the beginning of the 21st century - and there are about 7000 of them. Such linguistic variability has become the result of millennia of gradual changes. Now, due to the fact that some languages prevail at the local or even global levels, the total number of languages over the next century will be reduced to 500.

The Long Now Foundation takes 10,000 years of the existence of human civilization and projects them for 10,000 years in advance. Rosetta Disk is created for people from the future who will be similar to us in the structure of the body, thinking and probably have similar language abilities. A thin disk about 7.5 cm with a nickel with a diameter and contains about 14,000 data pages - these are like pages of a book, only microscopic and applied with an embossed seal. Nickel is not subject to decomposition and corrosion, it can withstand high temperatures, and therefore the disk will last a long time. Rosetta Disk is not created in the event of an apocalypse or cardinal changes in society - however, a lot of things can happen in several millennia. So Rosetta Disk is a reliable and long -term storage, a kind of decoder in the form of a ring. ”

Why are the libraries not die