Here are some thoughts that fit to what we have talked about at BlogWalk 9.0 . I really enjoyed to blogwalk and hope that there will be the opportunity for extended conversations:
I gonna send my radio weblog hereby to the realm of myths. that doesn't mean that i will stop blogging in general, it simply means that i willchange the blogging tool and dont have a clue if it will be possible to move the old content. Moving from one tool to the other is certainly a risky procedure. I am quite sure that in some years there only very few links to the old radio archive will remain and it will hereby become more and more irrelevant to me. Maybe at some point it will get lost at all. Question: Is that good or bad?
Well it depends. I am certainly not a friend of digital heritage in the sense, that I would appreciate it if all the data i've produced during my life would be stored for eternity. Isnt't Lifeblogging just another useless atempt to get immortal. At blogwalk somebody said, that in twenty years harddisk will become big enough to videotape and store a whole life on a single disk. It would be as sensefull lets better say senseless as being preserved as a mummy. Well it is nice to have some egypt mummies, but is there a sense to preserve all dead people?? In other words my "digital heritage" - if not surrounded by any discourse around it - it will be used for some scientific usage or abused to support the arguments of anybody who comes after me, and I will not have the chance to raise my voice again. Probably there wont be anybody who knew me, and who might have a clue of what i've really meant with what i have written. It will be very easy to twist my words.
What i try to say is that there is - of course - a difference between data and its meaning. There is not much meaning in preserving data without a certain discourse and practice around it. Even worse without that practice it becomes only a burden for the future: it will be a simple waste of energy and other ressources. The value of "old data" directly relates to its value in producing new one. As any form of capital it is to flow and should not be stored simply in order to become more and more. -
There will certainly be some dagoberts who take extended data baths and dive for "historical truth" - . As in the case of money it depends on the processes in which data will be used. As long as I live i am able to influence the usage of my data. As soon as i 'm dead it can be abused and it needs deeper consideration to leave it or not. Probably a good idea would be to give it to persons or better a "fund" I trust, hmm the longer one thinks the more complicated it gets....
However, I am quite sure that there will be far more data lost than data which is long time preserved ... and finally i think it's ok. Some weblogs will only exist as citations in others weblogs. Some traces exist, but there is no coherent "historical" original. In other words it has become a myth. In respect to my radio weblog there's not much that i could loose. I was a lousy and irregular radio blogger, and "vanishing in the realm of myth" souds at least promising....
12:42:04 PM
|