Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk
Hi:
From The Guardian:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Serf
Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century” through what he called “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians because the electronic files that describe the story will not run on their computers.
Cerf pushed for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are.
“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said.
“We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,” he added.
<snip> Full story at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgotte... Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
I'm gonna assume this is "news" only because Vint Cerf said it. Rather than the sky is falling, it's too bad he didn't use the occasion to spotlight work that archivists are actually doing. On Friday, February 13, 2015, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi:
From The Guardian:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Serf
Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century” through what he called “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians because the electronic files that describe the story will not run on their computers.
Cerf pushed for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are.
“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said.
“We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,” he added.
<snip>
Full story at:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgotte...
Cheers
Brian Randell
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk <javascript:;> PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org <javascript:;>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Matthew Kirschenbaum Associate Professor of English Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) University of Maryland 301-405-8505 or 301-314-7111 (fax) http://mkirschenbaum.net and @mkirschenbaum on Twitter Track Changes tumblr: http://trackchangesbook.tumblr.com/
I'm glad that he mentioned the policy changes that are needed to keep archivists and librarians out of jail for doing their jobs. :-) On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 4:47 AM, Matthew Kirschenbaum < mkirschenbaum@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm gonna assume this is "news" only because Vint Cerf said it. Rather than the sky is falling, it's too bad he didn't use the occasion to spotlight work that archivists are actually doing.
On Friday, February 13, 2015, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi:
From The Guardian:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Serf
Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century” through what he called “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians because the electronic files that describe the story will not run on their computers.
Cerf pushed for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are.
“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said.
“We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,” he added.
<snip>
Full story at:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgotte...
Cheers
Brian Randell
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Matthew Kirschenbaum Associate Professor of English Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) University of Maryland 301-405-8505 or 301-314-7111 (fax) http://mkirschenbaum.net and @mkirschenbaum on Twitter
Track Changes tumblr: http://trackchangesbook.tumblr.com/
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
Great point Mathew. Archivists have been dealing with this issue in a systematic way for well over a decade, if not longer. Here at CHM, we bring up the issue in our “Memory & Storage” gallery in a CHM-produced mini-movie called “The Digital Dark Age.” See: http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325 I was also interviewed on the topic by BBC this past week. My basic observation was that people will need to take *personal* responsibility for their data, migrating it to newer storage technologies as they arrive and that relying on a corporate entity to do that has some serious privacy and long-term reliability issues. Will Google someday try to sell you access to your own data? It would be naive to assume they are acting upon humanitarian impulses… the case of Gmail may be instructive: the contents of all emails sent or received by Gmail are scanned by Google to target advertising to you. What if Google goes out of business? Such “longue durée” questions are exactly what archivists are philosophically and professionally trained to consider. Will Google adopt that same perspective? Is that even possible? Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055 Twitter: @ComputerHistory On Feb 13, 2015, at 4:47 AM, Matthew Kirschenbaum <mkirschenbaum@gmail.com<mailto:mkirschenbaum@gmail.com>> wrote: I'm gonna assume this is "news" only because Vint Cerf said it. Rather than the sky is falling, it's too bad he didn't use the occasion to spotlight work that archivists are actually doing. On Friday, February 13, 2015, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk<mailto:brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk>> wrote: Hi:
From The Guardian:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Serf
Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century” through what he called “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians because the electronic files that describe the story will not run on their computers.
Cerf pushed for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are.
“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said.
“We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,” he added.
<snip> Full story at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgotte... Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk<javascript:;> PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<javascript:;>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- Matthew Kirschenbaum Associate Professor of English Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) University of Maryland 301-405-8505 or 301-314-7111 (fax) http://mkirschenbaum.net<http://mkirschenbaum.net/> and @mkirschenbaum on Twitter Track Changes tumblr: http://trackchangesbook.tumblr.com/ _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208 The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless. -- Len
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-) On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote:
At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
Do you think one of the problems is, to some extent, that the viewpoint presented by Vint is from the late 90s? ie Stewart Brand. Not had time to look at other postings yet, so can't make a complete assessment. However, that was the thing that struck me when I looked at one of the BBC write ups. Adam On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 5:49 PM, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote:
At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Adam P. Spring Skype: adampspring
We toughed upon it a little bit in this article: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5455818&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5455818 On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:08 PM, adam spring <adamspring@gmail.com> wrote:
Do you think one of the problems is, to some extent, that the viewpoint presented by Vint is from the late 90s? ie Stewart Brand.
Not had time to look at other postings yet, so can't make a complete assessment. However, that was the thing that struck me when I looked at one of the BBC write ups.
Adam
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 5:49 PM, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote:
At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Adam P. Spring
Skype: adampspring
-- Adam P. Spring Skype: adampspring
*touched On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:12 PM, adam spring <adamspring@gmail.com> wrote:
We toughed upon it a little bit in this article: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5455818&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5455818
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:08 PM, adam spring <adamspring@gmail.com> wrote:
Do you think one of the problems is, to some extent, that the viewpoint presented by Vint is from the late 90s? ie Stewart Brand.
Not had time to look at other postings yet, so can't make a complete assessment. However, that was the thing that struck me when I looked at one of the BBC write ups.
Adam
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 5:49 PM, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote:
At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/ listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Adam P. Spring
Skype: adampspring
-- Adam P. Spring
Skype: adampspring
-- Adam P. Spring Skype: adampspring
Hi: The most challenging digital preservation project I personally know of (though doubtless there are many more) was the project to rescue the BBC Domesday Book Videodisks- see http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna A cautionary remark from the concluding section of this account of the project is: "The lesson of this digital preservation project is that if you have enough time, individual skill, dedication and imagination then almost anything is possible, provided that you don't leave it too late.” Cheers Brian On 13 Feb 2015, at 17:49, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote: At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
Very good point. There was a good write up in the Guardian from 2002 about trying to recover data from Doomsday: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning http://cool.conservation-us.org/coolaic/sg/emg/library/pdf/wheatley/Wheatley... On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Brian Randell < brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi:
The most challenging digital preservation project I personally know of (though doubtless there are many more) was the project to rescue the BBC Domesday Book Videodisks- see
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna
A cautionary remark from the concluding section of this account of the project is: "The lesson of this digital preservation project is that if you have enough time, individual skill, dedication and imagination then almost anything is possible, provided that you don't leave it too late.”
Cheers
Brian
On 13 Feb 2015, at 17:49, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote: At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Adam P. Spring Skype: adampspring
Hi, At the risk of being sidelined I too have long been intrigued by the various attempts to recover the 1986 virtual Domesday book files and images. Its detailed in the source that Brian linked to that there were multiple attempts to make available the materials (at least 3) including the CAMiLEON emulator project that succeeded in creating an emulator, but seems to have ultimately not been how access has been preserved. It is worth emphasizing this website http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html by Andy Finney (who helped produce the 1986 discs and helped recover the images and preserve them in a more current video format) details many of the issues in this including some information on subsequent developments such as the Domesday Reloaded project which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the original by making some of the information available and undertaking an update (the original project involved a large component of public participation that was revived here) http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/story . I'm not sure but my sense is that the Reloaded project required or made use of some reingineering and preservation beyond what the other three projects had done. Many intriguing twists and turns in that one. As an incurable pack rat trying to keep track of my 17 year old e-mails and the like is my most direct and sustained experience with the problems of digital preservation. If enough energy and time is expended the problems don't seem insurmountable, but that is the rub. I would point out that even hard records get thrown out and lost to history with a sharp regularity and so I would suspect preservation in general is a perennial problem and question of priorities and resources. -- Yours Truly, Allan Olley, PhD http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/ On Fri, 13 Feb 2015, adam spring wrote:
Very good point. There was a good write up in the Guardian from 2002 about trying to recover data from Doomsday: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning http://cool.conservation-us.org/coolaic/sg/emg/library/pdf/wheatley/Wheatley... 004.pdf
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote: Hi:
The most challenging digital preservation project I personally know of (though doubtless there are many more) was the project to rescue the BBC Domesday Book Videodisks- see
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna
A cautionary remark from the concluding section of this account of the project is: "The lesson of this digital preservation project is that if you have enough time, individual skill, dedication and imagination then almost anything is possible, provided that you don't leave it too late.”
Cheers
Brian
On 13 Feb 2015, at 17:49, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
> And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-) > > On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote: > At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote: > > Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf > > We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. > http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208 > > The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless. > > -- Len > > > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members > > > > -- > Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS > Ph.D. Candidate > The Information School > University of Washington > > An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Adam P. Spring
Skype: adampspring
Since we are sharing links to projects and reports: Don't forget Preserving Virtual Worlds: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/17097 (Stanford, Illinois, MITH, RIT) And several links for this important report on preserving software and software development documentation, just out this week (Stanford, UCSC), a case study of the UCSC game project, Prom Week: Here's the blog post: http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2015/02/preserving-cultural-software/ Here's a Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/Games.Playable.UCSC/posts/898015030231262 Here's a tweet: https://twitter.com/noahwf/status/565198816408633344 Here's the UC repository link: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0wg4w6b9 Enjoy! Henry On 2/13/2015 10:17 AM, Brian Randell wrote:
Hi:
The most challenging digital preservation project I personally know of (though doubtless there are many more) was the project to rescue the BBC Domesday Book Videodisks- see
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna
A cautionary remark from the concluding section of this account of the project is: "The lesson of this digital preservation project is that if you have enough time, individual skill, dedication and imagination then almost anything is possible, provided that you don't leave it too late.”
Cheers
Brian
On 13 Feb 2015, at 17:49, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote: At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Henry Lowood Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections; Film & Media Collections HSSG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004 650-723-4602; lowood@stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
Henry, thanks for doing this. As a reminder to all of us, many archivists, computer scientists, and computer vendors and government agencies are hard at work on this problem of preservation not just to keep we historians happy, but for the functioning of society. In the USA, for example, by federal law all national agencies and offices MUST preserve their records, corporations too because they need to defend themselves from lawsuits. So there are a lot of smart folks working on the problem. Henry's pointers are the tip of the iceberg. On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 12:32 PM, Henry Lowood <lowood@stanford.edu> wrote:
Since we are sharing links to projects and reports: Don't forget Preserving Virtual Worlds: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/17097 (Stanford, Illinois, MITH, RIT) And several links for this important report on preserving software and software development documentation, just out this week (Stanford, UCSC), a case study of the UCSC game project, Prom Week: Here's the blog post: http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2015/ 02/preserving-cultural-software/ Here's a Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/ Games.Playable.UCSC/posts/898015030231262 Here's a tweet: https://twitter.com/noahwf/status/565198816408633344 Here's the UC repository link: http://www.escholarship.org/ uc/item/0wg4w6b9 Enjoy! Henry
On 2/13/2015 10:17 AM, Brian Randell wrote:
Hi:
The most challenging digital preservation project I personally know of (though doubtless there are many more) was the project to rescue the BBC Domesday Book Videodisks- see
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna
A cautionary remark from the concluding section of this account of the project is: "The lesson of this digital preservation project is that if you have enough time, individual skill, dedication and imagination then almost anything is possible, provided that you don't leave it too late.”
Cheers
Brian
On 13 Feb 2015, at 17:49, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan
Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote: At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/ people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Henry Lowood Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections; Film & Media Collections HSSG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004 650-723-4602; lowood@stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
I wanted to so some research to be sure of the citation/URL before I contributed another fine body of work: http://www.cosma.org/computer+preservation by Dr. Mary Hopper of the NEW Computer Museum in Boston. She is an important supporter of the premise that at least in the near term we do need to preserve the underlying layers of the digital document, and she backs up the premise with an impressive collection of working hardware and original software platforms. And this documentary work on cosma.org - both content and hosting at her own expense - is very, very impressive. -- Ian On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:49 AM, jcortada University of Minnesota < jcortada@umn.edu> wrote:
Henry, thanks for doing this. As a reminder to all of us, many archivists, computer scientists, and computer vendors and government agencies are hard at work on this problem of preservation not just to keep we historians happy, but for the functioning of society. In the USA, for example, by federal law all national agencies and offices MUST preserve their records, corporations too because they need to defend themselves from lawsuits. So there are a lot of smart folks working on the problem. Henry's pointers are the tip of the iceberg.
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 12:32 PM, Henry Lowood <lowood@stanford.edu> wrote:
Since we are sharing links to projects and reports: Don't forget Preserving Virtual Worlds: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/17097 (Stanford, Illinois, MITH, RIT) And several links for this important report on preserving software and software development documentation, just out this week (Stanford, UCSC), a case study of the UCSC game project, Prom Week: Here's the blog post: http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2015/ 02/preserving-cultural-software/ Here's a Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/ Games.Playable.UCSC/posts/898015030231262 Here's a tweet: https://twitter.com/noahwf/status/565198816408633344 Here's the UC repository link: http://www.escholarship.org/ uc/item/0wg4w6b9 Enjoy! Henry
On 2/13/2015 10:17 AM, Brian Randell wrote:
Hi:
The most challenging digital preservation project I personally know of (though doubtless there are many more) was the project to rescue the BBC Domesday Book Videodisks- see
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna
A cautionary remark from the concluding section of this account of the project is: "The lesson of this digital preservation project is that if you have enough time, individual skill, dedication and imagination then almost anything is possible, provided that you don't leave it too late.”
Cheers
Brian
On 13 Feb 2015, at 17:49, Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan
Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote: At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:
Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf
We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208
The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.
-- Len
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/ listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/ people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Henry Lowood Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections; Film & Media Collections HSSG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004 650-723-4602; lowood@stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
-- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.
participants (9)
-
adam spring -
Allan Olley -
Brian Randell -
Dag Spicer -
Henry Lowood -
Ian S. King -
jcortada University of Minnesota -
Len Shustek -
Matthew Kirschenbaum