Posted: Mar 07, 2017 12:34 pm
Indeed.Scot Dutchy wrote:Will they still be able to see all this digital rubbish. That is a big assumption.
I started out in online atheism on the Internet Infidels Discussion Forum back in 2003. Everything from the time I was there is gone, not archived, and not even retrievable by the Wayback Machine. Those posts include some of the best internet discussions I've ever read (mostly between an atheist called "bd-from-kg" and a theist called "luvluv").
I gave a talk on the Slenderman a few years ago, and in researching, I was pretty disappointed that I had to rely on the Wayback Machine to get the original images that created the character on SomethingAwful.
And the Wayback Machine isn't a guarantee. It has questionable legal status, and is a centralised server which could disappear at any time.
Digital storage mechanisms aren't exactly solid stone. More and more data is being encrypted, and data formats can go out of fashion leaving us with data that might as well be encrypted.