(cross-posted at TechLearning)We are
constantly telling our students to be careful what
they post online because “nothing ever goes away on
the Internet.” That photo of them at that Keg Party
posted on Facebook could come back to haunt them
later when they try to get into a college or apply
for a job. Theoretically, this is definitely true.
We have created a “collective” memory on the
Internet. A photo can be copied — an endless number
of times — and might never go away. To all intents
and purposes, it’s permanent.
I remember this idea of
permanence hit home for many people when
DejaNews
made it easy to search archives of Usenet posts.
Google
later acquired DejaNews and other archives,
allowing searches to reach all the way back to posts
created in 1981. Quite simply, many early users had
not thought about their posts having such longevity
and there was an outcry of loss of privacy and
control upon the realization that the content could
now be “owned” and available through a search
engine. Online discussions changed as Usenet users
shifted from the perception that their posts had a
shelf-life of one or two weeks to now having
immortality.
This idea of “Internet-permanence” is now more
expected than it was in the early days of the
Internet, perhaps so much so that it is startling to
see how easily a large part of it can be obliterated
literally overnight. This
Time article reports on how Yahoo! is wiping out
7 million websites created in the early days of the
Internet as it kills off its GeoCities. Why should
we care? These sites have much to tell us about
those early Internet days and are an essential piece
in the story of its evolution. Culturally, these
sites are part of our collective narrative, and
whether you care about them or not, many of them
have just disappeared forever. Think planet Alderaan
being blown up in Star Wars IV: A New Hope.
There’s no getting this back.
The Archive Team at
archiveteam.org has attempted to save as many of
these pages as possible before their obliteration.
They state their purpose and justification on their
website:
While the natural urge by some would be
to let Geocities sink into obscurity and death,
leaving nothing in its wake but bad memories and
shudders of recognition at endless “under
construction” GIFs, the fact remains that
Geocities was for millions of people the first
experience dealing with the low-cost,
full-color, world-accessible website and all the
possibilities this contained. To not at least
have the option of browsing these old sites
would be a loss of the very history of the web
from the side of the people who came to know it,
not the designers who descended upon it. For
that reason, Archive Team thinks Geocities is
worth saving.
Geocities is a cautionary tale
for all of us. Now that we’ve come to expect
permanence from the Internet and move deeper into
cloud
computing, it’s tempting to think
that everything is safe and backed up. But, as the
Archive Team reminds us, all that data, writing,
photos, movies, etc. are at the mercy of
corporations. The lesson
to our students can’t just be “be careful what you
post on the Internet because it will be there
forever,” but must also include, “BACKUP what you’ve
posted on the Internet, because it may not be there
forever!”
This lesson doesn’t just apply to an individual’s
personal Internet offerings, but must be appreciated
on the “bigger picture” of collective-cultural,
preservation. In a world where much of our story is
being told digitally, it is important to realize
that those digits must be protected, archived, and
backed up.
For more reading and
investigation of preserving our Internet history, I
direct you to the work being done at the
Internet Archive, whose mission is to offer
“permanent access for
researchers, historians, scholars, people with
disabilities, and the general public to historical
collections that exist in digital format” as
well as one of my favorite books:
Free
Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by
Lawrence Lessig.
http://tekblog.teksquisite.com/2011/02/04/people-always-forget-that-the-internet-is-forever%E2%80%A6/
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Works Cited
“Deja News –
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov.
2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejanews>.
“Google Acquires
Deja.com.” Information Today, inc. – NewsBreaks.
N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. <http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Google-Acquires-Dejacom-17652.asp>.
“Usenet – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.”
Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov.
2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Archives_and_Web_interfaces>.
“Yahoo! Pulls Plug on GeoCities, Erases Internet
History – TIME.”
Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News
Photos, Video, Tech Reviews – TIME.com. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. <http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1936645,00.html?xid=rss-topstories-polar>.
