[LINK] Internet Archival

[David Lochrin]

On Tuesday 29 September 2009 09:19, Ivan Trundle wrote:

> On 28/09/2009, at 10:37 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:
>> The trouble is that both the first decades of TV and the first 
>> decades of the internet have been interesting and creative times.  
>> If we lose 90% of that material or more, little will be left for our 
>> descendants who will not have a choice like we have, of 
>> saving it or not.  It will just be gone.  Perhaps it doesn't matter.
> 
> You raise a good point, but I wonder if it is really, really 
> important to trap and store this boundless creativity.

It's history, so yes it's important to save at least a good part of it.  Our descendants need to be able to see where their fore-fathers have been.  I can think of a few popular shows on commercial TV, not to mention parts of certain newspapers, which are the absolute dregs of "lowest common denominator" culture IMO (and of course I wouldn't watch them :-) but they do shed a lot of light on the mind of the late 20th - early 21st century man.

> Some argue that human development has grown exponentially 
> (I always cringe when I see this word used) in recent times, [...]

YES!!  And "decimated" is another.  Something grows exponentially when the rate of growth is proportional to its magnitude.

David