Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Store your data (life history) online? Growing threat of its deletion and loss

#1
C C Offline
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210...ng-deleted

INTRO: How would you adjust your efforts to preserve digital data that belongs to you – emails, text messages, photos and documents – if you knew it would soon get wiped in a series of devastating electrical storms?

That’s the future catastrophe imagined by Susan Donovan, a high school teacher and science fiction writer based in New York. In her self-published story New York Hypogeographies, she describes a future in which vast amounts of data get deleted thanks to electrical disturbances in the year 2250.

In the years afterwards, archaeologists comb through ruined city apartments looking for artefacts from the past – the early 2000s. “I was thinking about, ‘How would it change people going through an event where all of your digital stuff is just gone?’” she says.

In her story, the catastrophic data loss is not a world-ending event. But it is a hugely disruptive one. And it prompts a change in how people preserve important data. The storms bring a renaissance of printing, Donovan writes. But people are also left wondering how to store things that can’t be printed – augmented reality games, for instance.

Data has never been completely safe from obliteration. Just consider the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria – its very destruction is possibly the only reason you’ve heard about it. Digital data does not disappear in huge conflagrations, but rather with a single click or the silent, insidious degradation of storage media over time.

Today, we’re becoming accustomed to such deletions. There are lots of examples – the MySpace profiles that famously vanished in 2019. Or the many Google services that have shut down over the years. And then there are the online data storage companies that have offered to keep people’s data safe for them. Ironically, they have sometimes ended up earmarking it for deletion.

In other cases, these services actually keep running for long periods. But users might lose their login details. Or forget, even, that they had an account in the first place. They’ll probably never find the data stored there again, like they might find a shoebox of old letters in the attic.

Donovan’s interest in the ephemerality of digital data stems from her personal experiences. She studied maths at university and has copies of her handwritten notes. “There’s a point when I started taking digital notes and I can’t find them,” she says with a laugh... (MORE)
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Scientific Publishing Careers Appear to be Growing Shorter and Shorter Yazata 2 48 Mar 25, 2024 03:56 AM
Last Post: Syne
  Are there any online computer science course I can take for under $800? Ostronomos 2 260 Oct 20, 2022 07:04 PM
Last Post: Zinjanthropos
  There's no scientific consensus on what 'growing pains' in children actually are C C 0 71 Jul 23, 2022 05:40 PM
Last Post: C C
  Threat of alien organisms from space: New field of invasion science proposed C C 0 67 Nov 17, 2021 08:35 PM
Last Post: C C
  New technique for growing teeth back Magical Realist 1 237 May 1, 2021 07:31 PM
Last Post: C C
  Why Your Dog Likes Sticking Its Head Out the Car Window C C 0 171 Oct 1, 2019 02:03 AM
Last Post: C C
  Online activists are silencing us, scientists say C C 0 304 Mar 15, 2019 07:57 AM
Last Post: C C
  Algorithms maximise profits for online retailers by colluding to keep prices high C C 0 285 Feb 28, 2019 08:40 PM
Last Post: C C
  Narcissists, Psychopaths And Manipulators Are Less Convincing Online Than In Person C C 1 517 Mar 18, 2016 08:58 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)