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Bitrot

How everything on the Internet is permanent but still disappears

I once read an article a long time ago about a term called bit rot. I don't know where I read it, nor do I have the interest right now to search for it on the Internet. The gist is basically this: that we entrust our data to these certain formats that we blindly trust will last the test of time, yet, as the Wayback Machine's existence can attest, not everything is permanent, and formats change.

For those old enough to remember what computing was like two or more decades into the past, will remember many old formats that are no long in use today. Things physical like Zip Drives and floppy disks, to old databases and websites that housed our data, but yet we no longer use. An argument can be made that maybe that old data was upgraded to newer databases and newer systems, but in the case that it wasn't, large volumes of potentially important historical information is just lost to time because of outmoded formats and now-archaic storage systems that rarely anyone would know to interface with.

The irony of bit rot is that the data is there, but it would take the digital age equivalent of a archaeologist to uncover the data. In most cases, these hard drives are probably just wiped and/or tossed in the trash.

On the #smallweb, I've come across quite a few articles harkening back to the days of the yesterweb, wishing things were simpler. It's no wonder of course that I see them here, seeing the premise that Gemini is built upon; but nevertheless, it often reminds me of what my first website looked like on Geocities. At the time I thought it was amazing, and by today's standards it's complete rubbish, BUT, since it is a part of my past I wouldn't mind being able to visit that site again and revisit my "digital roots". There's no possible way of doing this of course, but so is the way of the Internet.

They say that everything is permanent on the Internet, but I say that given a long enough time line, nearly everything will be lost. Technologies and public interests will change, and since our current Internet is mostly driven by large profit-driven corporations, retention of such archival will be costly and not worth anyone's time to truly maintain. As an example, I give you MySpace. Many years of truly unique human interaction happened, and yet where is all this data? Is someone saving it somewhere? If they are, we don't know if piecing it back together again is in the realm of feasibility.

All of this is to say that I think that large amounts of human knowledge is being lost to bit rot. I'll admit that a lot of it is still saved in newer databases or systems, and that everyone's data need not be saved (i.e., who cares about that cat video you posted in 2002), but still, it seems crazy that EVERYTHING is now digital.

As another bit of introspection, I will also admit that many centuries of human knowledge have, on the whole, not been saved, but there were still teachers and physical books from which to carry that information from generation to generation...and arguably only the important items were saved.

This is also why I have been veering away from putting my ideas and data into a digital format, I've been writing in a physical journal. So my quandary now is deciding whether to journal here on gemini. Now that I have kids, I feel like I want to write in something that has proven to last the test of time. Sure, it can get lost, but chances are that in 50 or 80 years, someone can pick it up and just read it. No technology needed, no power, no translating of formats into another format. It'll still (potentially) be there for post-apocalyptic people to ogle over and wonder what it was like living in this time. If you're wonder, yes, I write on archival quality paper.

I started off my life as an uber computer nerd in the 90s, and I feel that now that I know where all of this is going, the old proven ways of communication and living your life are the way to go. I'm not anti-technology, I just don't like what humans are doing with it. And I'll still be on this computer coding, trying to figure out how TLS certificates work and improving my gemini capsule.

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2022-06-04

Tags: technology, bit rot, nostalgia

Gritty