Re: Preservation of digital information

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Brewster Kahle
Mon, 02 Mar 1998 12:41:16 -0800

If we were talking about saving today's webpages for future humans, I would
agree: let'em rot. But we are not. The issue is that we have a new
mechanism for processing human artifacts, the computer. You do not have
time to read all the books in the library, but your computer does. And
through datamining we are getting value out of the readings.

It is the fundemental change we are in the middle of: communities of
knowledge have moved from memory, to manuscript, to print, now to
computer-- huge changes ensued in each of the past transitions. Bring on
the fireworks!

First we have to build the collection to chew on, and that is what Alexa
and the Internet Archive are building.

-brewster

At 12:25 PM 3/2/98 -0800, Stewart Brand wrote:
>At 3:11 PM -0500 3/2/98, Peter Graham, RUL wrote:
>>Thomasina: [The great library of Alexandria was burned....] All the lost
>>plays of the Athenians....How can we sleep for grief?
>
>I'm with Thomasina. I was during the play, and am now. Thomasina herself,
>and complexity theory two centuries early with her, burns. Life would be
>wholly different and probably better. Septimus was clever but wrong, in my
>view.
>
>
>