I agree with everything although I have some gripes with
appearances vs the way-things-are-going:
I *want* the Internet to be an archive of History. But it's
disappearing.
There are some efforts for preservation of web-past (such as the
Internet Archive) but much is already lost. The findability of
things is linked directly to "links that work" and links are
broken everywhere, even on big company websites, but especially
for smaller, unique sites.
Large shut-downs have completely eliminated the presences of
information in an irretrievable fashion. America Online in 2007
did a redesign, which is fine... but they scrapped nearly 20
years worth of forums, interactions, software, HUMAN effort.
Gone. Wiped out. Erased from the annals of history.
Yahoo did the same for Geocities.
If you search for anything that's from BEFORE 2009 or so, you'll
find it gets increasingly difficult to find.
The history being saved by the Internet is a very shallow
history; it is not very deep. And I'm very concerned about it.
I'll give an example:
Where will *this very message* be in 2025?
Will Facebook exist anymore? Probably not, as most social
networks have their day in the sun.
So where will it go?
[I've been in a process of trying to collect everything I've
written online in a single place since 1988... and the process
gets brutal beyond a certain point in time. and then, if it's
pre-1994, suddenly it's findable because of Usenet].
As paper publishing gets less and less -which is good for the
environment (supposedly, although paper is recyclable) - and
things are available only online... it's fine... but... will
that information be available in 3 years? 5 years? 20 years?
