11 april 2022
Some thoughts about digital preservation: since digital media is so fragile (file formats being deprecated, memory degrading, old data being lost or deleted) I find efforts for digital preservation very admirable. I really enjoy the work of the internet archive and the swedish internet museum (internetstiftelsen). But I also think, just as with regular culture, things kind of exist to eventually be lost. Cultural movements, music genres, digital trends, content, it all lives for a fairly short time, and that's alright. Everything is derivative -- we build on it, etc. I'm coming to terms with not being remembered. It's alright. I'm a small piece of the digital world, and I will leave a small dent there. What I create or write will likely not be seen by very many, or remembered for very long, but it will help shape the future. If my work is archived somewhere, I'm not dissatisfied, but just like taking notes or keeping a journal, this documentation is mostly there to help us feel at peace with forgetting.