No Data Lasts Forever
The article emphasizes the impermanence of data storage, highlighting historical losses and the fragility of modern methods, raising concerns about future records and the need for preservation efforts.
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The article discusses the impermanence of data and the fragility of various storage methods throughout history. It highlights that no data lasts forever, as hard drives, backup systems, and even physical media like books and optical discs are susceptible to failure, degradation, and destruction. The author reflects on the evolution of data storage, from ancient methods like papyrus to modern digital formats, noting that each advancement has introduced greater vulnerability. Historical examples illustrate this point, such as the loss of Maya codices during the Spanish conquest and the limited survival of ancient Greek and Roman texts due to the efforts of early scholars. The article raises concerns about the future of 21st-century records, questioning what will endure over time given the reliance on fragile technology and the potential for data loss through neglect or intentional deletion. The author warns that as data storage becomes more expensive, older data may be discarded, leading to significant gaps in historical records. Ultimately, the piece emphasizes the need for careful preservation efforts to ensure that future generations have access to the knowledge and culture of the present.
- Data is inherently impermanent and susceptible to loss.
- Historical examples show that many records have been lost due to degradation or destruction.
- Modern data storage methods are more fragile than previous technologies.
- The future of 21st-century records is uncertain, with potential for significant data loss.
- Preservation efforts are crucial to maintain access to historical knowledge.
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5 commentsThis is the crux of it. You can have your holographic quartz or whatever new technology is supposed to last a hundred million years, but unless someone is keeping it from being thrown away after your family has a yard sale after you die, it's gone. Getting people to care about your data is the hardest thing required to make data last forever.
If fees for adding data were continually adjusted to keep data size to an economically viable size.
I.e. there would be a continual auction of adding data, with the fees spread out among verifiably maintained repositories (say fastest generation of hash across all data from previous hash, every minute.)
And each repository could compete by price to service data requests.
The point being: long term distributed incentive to maintain and serve data.
(Scaling to vast amounts of data vs. sharding - allowing individual repositories to hold partial data - balanced to ensure distributed backups, but not more than necessary to keep each archive size manageable for many providers.)
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Best done without creating any new coin type. I.e. avoid creating any non-aligned hype incentives.
Maybe this has already been done?
Maybe that will be the ultimate destination of all data: To train AIs.
In the future, data creators should be compensated for their contributions to build AIs.
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