What: Digital Is Forever, post on Info/Law blog at Hardvard
When: 17 Sept 2006
Link: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2006/10/17/digital-is-forever/
Reading notes:
Paradox of networked communications: making information from tangible form to streams of electronic bits makes it less transitory. Cost of mass storage shrinking, connectivity increasing, communications archituctures are more sofisticated. The longevity of information when it's in the network is theoretically infinite.
In some aspects, a positive development. In web 2.0 type services for document storage, photo galleries, uplading older archves. Email ends up in gmail, google docs and others. For someone who owns different computers it is useful to have the workspace preserved online accesible from anywhere.
The cost of the network permanence is only beginning to be explored. For esample, if you're a job applicant anything you've written is potentially still there. Once info is online is very hard to get it back offline again. i.e. The wayback machine ,google groups archives etc, even deleted emails may stiull exist and law enforcement authorities can get them. The durability of content raises problems with security and individual privacy. Once information is released into "the wild" tends to resist control.
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