>> I've heard it said that future cultural anthropologists of the future will absolutely love mining the rich personal data coming out of this period of time.
Former Anthropologist here.
While culturally speaking it will be interesting, up to a certain point in human history there has always been physical things left behind by cultures to denote their existence.
As our whole lives have become digital, once the servers are gone, the pseudo physical evidence will vanish. One of my professors told me in passing in the early aughts that, "This generation (meaning the Y generation) will barely leave a trace of its existence in 200 years."
He inferred that once technology has evolved past our current rate of burn, the mechanisms by which we preserve our memories will be forever wiped out. He made a note of saying, "When was the last time you used something physical to create, retain or share your memories?" When was the last time you printed a photograph? Listened to a music album? Once the devices by which we save our memories become obsolete, so does our existence.
It caught me off guard, and was. . one of those times where you stop and wonder what people will dig up in 2-300 years from now and discover about our civilization? Will it all just be zero's and one's on a server somewhere?
Couldn't you say that hard drives, SSDs, tape backups, etc are all still physical mediums? While these mediums lose data over time, forensics will still be able to recover partial data, similar to other physical mediums (pen and paper, photos, etc).
Those are usually destroyed when their useful life ends, exactly because someone might dig them up later and extract data from them. Large corporate data centers, for example, physically destroy hard disks and never allow them to leave the facility intact.
There will be hard drives left around by individual consumers, I suppose, but the vast majority of all those that exist today are likely to be deliberately destroyed. We're so good at copying and replicating data these days that we no longer rely on hard drives for data permanence over long periods.
Perhaps, but I tend to believe the data, as we depend more and more on the 'cloud' won't be tied to physical mediums (or particular physical mediums) and instead be towed along as technology and the mediums improve.
100 terabytes of information now will likely be absurdly easy to store 100 years from now, and we don't lose what we have now because data centers will just upgrade and move the data to better storage platforms as they are invented and deployed.
Athropology of the future may not include digging up hard drives in garbage dumps. Instead you just run the latest google search.
I don't think the 'The Ancients' really cared if they lasted 100 years or 10000 years. They used concrete, or stone, or wood, based on basically the same factors we do: ease of procurement, cost, suitability, and so on.
Anyway, just because some stone tablets are still around, doesn't make it a good storage medium. Most of them are destroyed or lost. Even the ones that are still around, don't give you the perfect fidelity you get with digital storage. And of course, once it's gone - smashed into bits or lost at the bottom of the sea - it's gone. Meanwhile I can copy data stored on a digital medium as many times as I like, with virtually no loss in fidelity or transcription errors, and store those copies anywhere.
Someone else mentioned that archeology of the future will likely consist of a Google search or something like it. I suspect they're right.
Comments
Former Anthropologist here.
While culturally speaking it will be interesting, up to a certain point in human history there has always been physical things left behind by cultures to denote their existence.
As our whole lives have become digital, once the servers are gone, the pseudo physical evidence will vanish. One of my professors told me in passing in the early aughts that, "This generation (meaning the Y generation) will barely leave a trace of its existence in 200 years."
He inferred that once technology has evolved past our current rate of burn, the mechanisms by which we preserve our memories will be forever wiped out. He made a note of saying, "When was the last time you used something physical to create, retain or share your memories?" When was the last time you printed a photograph? Listened to a music album? Once the devices by which we save our memories become obsolete, so does our existence.
It caught me off guard, and was. . one of those times where you stop and wonder what people will dig up in 2-300 years from now and discover about our civilization? Will it all just be zero's and one's on a server somewhere?
Couldn't you say that hard drives, SSDs, tape backups, etc are all still physical mediums? While these mediums lose data over time, forensics will still be able to recover partial data, similar to other physical mediums (pen and paper, photos, etc).
Those are usually destroyed when their useful life ends, exactly because someone might dig them up later and extract data from them. Large corporate data centers, for example, physically destroy hard disks and never allow them to leave the facility intact.
There will be hard drives left around by individual consumers, I suppose, but the vast majority of all those that exist today are likely to be deliberately destroyed. We're so good at copying and replicating data these days that we no longer rely on hard drives for data permanence over long periods.
(pure conjecture warning)
Perhaps, but I tend to believe the data, as we depend more and more on the 'cloud' won't be tied to physical mediums (or particular physical mediums) and instead be towed along as technology and the mediums improve.
100 terabytes of information now will likely be absurdly easy to store 100 years from now, and we don't lose what we have now because data centers will just upgrade and move the data to better storage platforms as they are invented and deployed.
Athropology of the future may not include digging up hard drives in garbage dumps. Instead you just run the latest google search.
I don't buy it. You could make a similar case against stone tablets.
Except stone tablets have endured and lasted over thousands of years.
Why do you think most megalithic structures were made of concrete? The Ancients intended them to last a lifetime.
I don't think the 'The Ancients' really cared if they lasted 100 years or 10000 years. They used concrete, or stone, or wood, based on basically the same factors we do: ease of procurement, cost, suitability, and so on.
Anyway, just because some stone tablets are still around, doesn't make it a good storage medium. Most of them are destroyed or lost. Even the ones that are still around, don't give you the perfect fidelity you get with digital storage. And of course, once it's gone - smashed into bits or lost at the bottom of the sea - it's gone. Meanwhile I can copy data stored on a digital medium as many times as I like, with virtually no loss in fidelity or transcription errors, and store those copies anywhere.
Someone else mentioned that archeology of the future will likely consist of a Google search or something like it. I suspect they're right.
Delicious 0's and 1's, all indexed and cross-referenced for your convenience.