Could Information-Projectiles be our Legacy?

The internet, and within it the blogosphere, are not legacy media. The internet races always into the future trailing it’s comet’s tail, a short electric past, while blogs and websites tumble into their own archives and disappear forever. Websites and weblogs if not kept up (and paid up), lapse, leaving only limited traces to be traced in future decades. What wisdoms, without durable printed pages, are we leaving for upcoming generations to contemplate?

Bricks and mortar libraries have tended to last for hundreds of years and sometimes far longer. Digital information and digital storage devices are more fugitive do not survive as well, nor migrate through generations with surety. Desert caves and tombs seem to preserve information best, but let’s not go there.

Should we invent an overview capture system within the internet that sends information-projectiles, skipping-stone time-capsules, that repeatedly revisit our great grandchildren’s computer-thingys to stir things up during their part of the Long Now? Like a benign viral pandemic, it would mysteriously appear into whatever the internet has then become at intervals of twelve years? How would we now know what is worth preserving and set to fast forward? The question begs us to evaluate the worth of what we are doing now. Most Twitter content and Utube afterimages would not make the short list. Lose the spam and the list is over eighty percent shorter with one click. The advertisements would fight for their lives and then be smothered by the mute button. What would remain? What do we really care about?

 

Comments

[braindumps]

Good post.
braindumps

[Ben Collins]

Words and photos, primarily.

I believe that the JPG format and current character sets will remain readable for historical purposes for many years to come. As humans begin to realize that their own legacies can be crafted online, they will begin to pick and choose from what they have already created digitally and perhaps even write down their stories or ideas in a focused way, selecting and crafting their legacy as something intended to last forever, passing along these digital archives to their children.

[mariana]

Very interesting post Mayer
I was wondering what role does the information support play in the ephimerous of the
information,because if you think about the times when only books existed, I do not think this
short life span of information would have been possible. So it somehow modifies what
is transmitted, and how. I do not want to go into Mcluchlan here.

I liked the idea of sending missiles, but the issue as you said it, is how to distinguish among what is worth sending and what isn't.
We can do an analogy and try to identify now which ones will be the pieces of art
that transcend our times and will become the classical ones.
I have some idea about how to do this but it's pretty experimental. I 'll save it
for a future discussion