sunshine ✿ @onewspace - Tumblr Blog

Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, two of my favorites!

Haku is holding a forget-me-not, Howl is holding a rose :)

“Daydream” and “Joyride”, both available as prints

What happens when the world’s knowledge is held in a quasi-public square owned by a private company that could soon go out of business?

surroundedbybooks

Jesus, I hadn’t even thought of this, but of course.

ndcirque

This is something that historians have been warning about for a couple of decades. How much of our history was not just on Twitter, but on MySpace, on blogs and web sites that came down after a few years, on e-mail, on texts. None of that leaves a record. Once the file is deleted, the server shut down and scrapped, the backup disks decay into being unreadable junk, that history is gone.

Does anyone remember when Obama and Clinton each held town hall campaign events on MySpace? Good luck finding anything about those now other than some news articles that say they happened. How many business zoom calls have formal meeting minutes taken? We are not saving histories. We aren’t even writing letters. I’m as guilty as anyone. My art is online and kept in the cloud. I make my Christmas Card every year, but I haven’t printed and mailed one in over a decade. It’s all sent electronically. Meaning that a generation from now no one will remember.

So the problem is bigger than Twitter. We are now a couple of decades into an age that will not leave any detailed historical record.

That is not good.

macleod

In pseudo and acadamic circles this has routinely been called the ‘digital dark age’, I even wrote on the subject a few years ago but can’t find that article right now. [There is even a Wikipedia article on the concept] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age#:~:text=The%20digital%20dark%20age%20is,technologies%20evolve%20and%20data%20decay).

It’s thought this might just be a black spot of knowledge, there are organizations working to stop this — archival websites primarily, but these are not able to penetrate all these corporate gated gardens, where paywalls, sign up walls, and more block access to. There is an ongoing campaign by megacorps to shutdown as many archival sites as possible.

This coupled with the fallibility of hard drives, CDs (make sure to back them up! They only have a 20-30 year lifetime!), and more and there is a chance that even though there is more information than ever before, more primary and secondary sources than ever, we may become just a strange blank spot in societal and cultural history. Digital decay is a terrifying concept that we are already beginning to live through.

fallentechnate

eaglefairy

@xkcd-for-that

xkcd-for-that

loriensystem-deactivated2024040

I do want to push back a bit on the idea of physical media decay. While much of physical media is likely to decay and there are a couple of good articles on the matter, CDs and DVDs that are cared for have pretty good longevity. My partner and I have a huge DVD and cd library with many DVDs that were printed at the very beginning of the format’s existence. And while some of these discs have developed things like heat spots or scratches from wear, the format is remarkably durable compared to things like cassette tapes, VHS, and certain old film stock (I’m looking at you nitrate). And it only takes talking to one film archivist to realize that DVD is undeniably a better format than old film. The sheer volume of film from the 20s and earlier that doesn’t exist anywhere is wild.

There’s also a decent movement to figure out how to access and use older tech and things on older formats. And while this doesn’t address the problem of corporations deleting huge swaths of information, it is a really interesting prospect when it comes to archiving the tech itself. I’ll also say, for every piece of paper we have from ancient Egypt, there are thousands that don’t exist any more. Physical things decay, and what is digital is based in the physical will decay as well.

What is really concerning now is that nothing is backed up physically. Just this week I went looking for music to buy from an artist I like and she doesn’t have any music available to buy physically, digitally, or anything, all you can do is stream. And the same thing is happening to academic articles and political speeches. It always just makes me go hmm someone should have put this on a thumb drive somewhere at the very least. But at the same time I’m glad some things are being deleted. Sometimes I miss the days when deleting something meant tearing it up and throwing it in a fireplace.

I can’t believe that kpop twitter had a great migration back

GOODBYE

Hi followers,

I have no idea why you guys have followed me for so long but thank you. I am moving blogs because this blog honestly gives me a lot of anxiety. I can’t bear to delete it though. You can message me for the new one but I honestly think everyone has forgotten little ol’ me. I guess Jinki's birthday is a perfect turning point for me.

Thank you for the some sweet memories. For all the friends I made. Lost. It’s quite bittersweet but necessary.

XOXO,

Jess

(holyaegyo, zionu, onsoonie)

#personal #i might cry #this is really painful and weird #i love my blog #but i don't anymore at the same time #bye guys #this is super hard #fml