Virtual heritage

How digital content disappears

If you take the end of the 90s for the reference point-as the beginning of a digital revolution, then we can find that the Internet has been growing rapidly for the past 25 years. In this case, growth is expressed not only in the number of users connected to the global network, but also the information they created. From the code directly, which ensures the functioning of all this joy, to endless content, the abundance of which began to progress with the appearance of advanced smartphones.

Even before the cloud storage of data, digital information seemed eternal. Here you can create a copy, save on the outer disk and store for a hundred years. Or maybe more. Simplicity of copying created the illusion of eternity. But in reality, as always, everything is more complicated.

Let's start with the banal: backup of information, which today in automatic (and often for additional money) is possible both at the application level and at the device level, is not used by everyone. Someone will check the settings and proudly say that he is not like that, but most do not even think about it.

Hard discs break, read CD, which is also not eternal, also find the device, and their life life is limited. The devices are lost, taking with it the arrays of the downloaded music, favorite films that not every player and so on, depending on tastes and hobbies, can open. Digital information has the same chance to get lost when moving, like a favorite mug. Or maybe higher.

The loss of personal digital economy is a common thing.

It would seem that the Internet, with all its clouds, will solve this issue. But it only seems to us that the information is somewhere there, in the cloud, and in practice, most often these are large objects that are directly on the ground or under it-the data centers, where the photos of your cat are directly stored on the servers.

Of course, there is a different level of security, of course, there is a backup. But everything is possible there. And most importantly, the data center owns iron. Content belongs to someone else.

How many services that promised a comfortable life for these 25 years? Thousands of attempts to give us the opportunity to conveniently store bookmarks, share photos, keep lists, store notes and so on and so on.

Some disappeared without even offering to download their data, then it was still possible.

Someone closed, unable to withstand the market pressure. Somewhere, your digital contribution was simply deleted: you have not come in for a long time, the password from the mail lost, the owners were sure that you did not need it large. And now, perhaps, something important and interesting is lost forever.

In terms of public information, everything is about the same. Reading some text, seeing the picture, listening to music online, you have no guarantee that tomorrow you will find this on the same link. They will stop paying hosting in that very reliable data center. Where the service can also break, and backup ... okay, you can admire yourself again if you make backups at least every day.

Meanwhile, even if you simply divide these 25 years into five -year plan, without attaching to events or a change of generations, we will see five eras, with our memes, idols, popular services, applications or even playlists. And at every next stage, the amount of multimedia accompanying these eras grew a frantic pace. In recent years, only digital art has been created as much as humanity has produced over the entire time of its existence.

And every day, the content made on a frantic scale is lost exactly the same as most material objects. And if the latter are still processing, then everything disappears without a trace.

Attempts to save a copy of the Internet began for a long time, and the Internet archive is the main representative of this idea. But taking into account the volume of attempts to preserve the digital heritage began to segment. From encyclopedias, along the manner of Wikipedia, fixing the current phenomena to preserve in the future, to digital museums. From collectors of screenshots to archives of media covers. And if you think that the ad “I will buy old files” is a joke, then ... no. Many digital rarities are of great interest for true connoisseurs of digital antiquity.

The Internet and in this, it would seem, a narrow segment gave birth to a giant market. If an offline fantasy today is limited by a museum or a collection of outlandish things, all niches are understandable and well studied, then in the network of options for preserving and fixing heritage is an order of magnitude more. And the global of the network is multiplying the markets: to collect, collect and record you can not only by regional or linguistic feature. There are many other criteria on the Internet.

Today, right now, we are entering a new era. The spread of powerful personal multimedia devices, multiplied by artificial intelligence, by data transfer and the number of active and more than advanced users, begins to produce an unimaginable amount of information, some of which will disappear naturally in any case: no one is insured that access to the PlayStation account will be lost along with a collection of your records of the best heads in FIFA.

The good news is that, of course, every day the security and the long -term storage of data are increasing, the preservation of the digital cultural heritage is institutionalized. This is thought of large funds, companies, numerous NGOs. Every day you can observe the appearance of successful examples that begin with enthusiasts on the knee. And if suddenly you do not want to go to work in a real museum at all, you can always go to work in digital or create your own.

And bad-no matter how technology develops, no one is safe from loss of data, and most importantly, it doesn’t really appreciate it-there can be more tears in your favorite circle than on the disk with the archive of photographs. Moreover, there will be even more digital content soon. But you can’t return the mug, and you won’t make a backup.

According to the laws of the genre of digital publication in this text, there could be many links, but the ambitious author dreams that he would be in eternity and survive through generations. And I am sure that in 10-15 years most of them will stop working - and even mentioning the name of a particular brand will require additional explanations. So I do not want to annoy the reader from the future.

I just want to remind you: nothing forever.

Even on the network.