How durable is our digital media?
After reading the article written by Cohen and Rosenzweig, I decided to expand on the definition of the durability of the digital media. In particular, I wanted to bring everyone’s attention to the real problem that is developing in our modern society. At the same time as we are celebrating our technological achievements and the shift towards digital media across all specters of life, we as civilized society moving ever deeper into dangerous territory. And this danger lies in the fact that potentially some or all digital content including digital history could be lost instantaneously if measures are not taken to preserve it!
I am really glad that for this class we have such a useful tool as this blog where many users can contribute their ideas to the same project. I think, it is great that we can collaborate with each other. It will help us to get inspirations and allow us to expand our horizons on this subject. And, at the same time, our blog can create debates and express new ideas and opinions. There are famous words that come to mind: ’’The society is shaped by the ideas that are generated by the individual members of this society’’.
I agree, all that positives of moving to digital media would be useless if all the data is lost, but the same could happen to old media, books, magazines, photos, VHS tapes. A fire at a central library was certainly devastated, but you also hoped that the library did not contain the ONLY copy of those books, you would think they would have several copies at other sites. The solution is redundancy of the digital data to not only different media, but several locations.
Thanks for this, Tatsiana. This is an ongoing question within the field, one you’ll often see it referred to with the word “sustainability.” I think digital historians are becoming more sensitive to making our projects sustainable, and are moving to adapt standards for digital projects (see TEI for an example) that draw upon the expertise of a broader community of scholars to establish baselines for projects that will make them more likely to survive.
Please keep this concept in mind over the course of the semester, and be ready to raise questions about sustainability/durability as we examine (and build!) various digital history projects.