
When Our Culture's Past Is Lost in the Cloud - benbreen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-our-digital-memory-is-lost-in-the-cloud-what-becomes-of-our-human-history/2016/03/24/11ed1482-ba46-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html
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cableshaft
I'm starting to print things again, in case I ever kick the bucket. I've been
preparing video and board game design documents, manuals, diagrams, etc. The
idea is to have a digital and physical copy of every personal project I've
worked on (and have the rights to).

It's going to be in phases. I've got a binder to collect my printed copies of
things, but I'm also going to include a usb stick, maybe a disc, which I know
could still be made obsolete, but I'll just keep the format up to date as long
as possible.

And I'm going to try to get physical copies of as many things as possible.
Printed personal copies of old, poorly edited manuscripts, etc.

Eventually I'd like to compile an ebook of all these documents and print
actual books, since those seem to last a lot longer and be passed down more. I
just acquired a 40 year old book written by the legendary game designer Sid
Sackson the other day. It's a little worn, but still plenty readable, and
includes rules and diagrams for several games in there. It's also fun to catch
glimpses of his personality in there, considering he's no longer alive.

I'm actually trying to get the actual games/books published, too, but that
takes time, especially if you're going through traditional means, which I'm
still trying to for now.

It's not the best solution, but it's what I've currently settled on. Paper
still lasts a lot longer than any digital storage medium we've come up with to
date.

You can also use version control to track changes in your documents too,
especially if you're using something like Markdown for formatting. I've got a
local Git that I update when I remember, but I'm really bad at both storing
the docs in that folder and remembering to make commits. I should probably
just set up some sort of daily scheduled commit for that folder.

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maxxxxx
I think it's OK if a lot of stuff gets forgotten. Most likely the important
stuff will be preserved somehow. Otherwise we'll just keep piling up mundane
stuff.

~~~
cableshaft
Anthropologists love mundane stuff. It gives them insight in how people
actually lived. Ain't nothing more exciting than some ancient Sumerian
transaction logs ([http://www.accountingin.com/accounting-historians-
journal/vo...](http://www.accountingin.com/accounting-historians-
journal/volume-11-number-1/the-significance-of-ancient-mesopotamia-in-
accounting-history/)) to an anthropologist.

Here's some pictures of some of the actual tablets:
[http://library.brown.edu/exhibits/archive/focus/cuneiform/](http://library.brown.edu/exhibits/archive/focus/cuneiform/)

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npsimons
> More likely, the digital file would come to be erased or rendered unreadable
> by changes in technical standards.

No one likes to admit it, but the solution is simple:

1) Plain ASCII text and

2) Distributed version control.

~~~
justinlardinois
Neither of which is very attractive to most people.

The author alluded to it, but domain-specific version control is more likely
to capture history, especially since most people don't know it exists. Recent
versions of Word, for example, record old versions, so we've got that, if we
can still read Word documents.

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mark_l_watson
I have a small book that was brought across the country by an 8 year old girl
in a wagon train in 1848. My grandmother gave it to me when I was a kid and I
believe the girl was a relative. Nothing quite matches holding a physical
artifact like an old book.

For digital artifacts: I eventually release my more recent books as free PDFs
and is is a good feeling to think that a few copies might still be looked at
sometime in the future.

