Digital archiving

History flushed

The digital age promised vast libraries, but they remain incomplete

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flymulla

The FBI is expected to reveal tomorrow that because of the rise of Web-based e-mail and social networks, it's "increasingly unable" to conduct certain types of surveillance that would be possible on cellular and traditional telephones. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni will outline what the bureau is calling the "Going Dark" problem, meaning that police can be thwarted when conducting court-authorized eavesdropping because Internet companies aren't required to build in back doors in advance, or because technology doesn't permit it. Any solution, according to a copy of Caproni's prepared comments obtained by CNET, should include a way for police armed with wiretap orders to conduct surveillance of "Web-based e-mail, social networking sites, and peer-to-peer communications technology." The last example, which was floated last fall, is likely to be the most contentious. When an encrypted voice application like Phil Zimmermann's Zfone is used, the entire conversation is scrambled from end to end. It's like handing a letter directly to its recipient--bypassing workers at the neighborhood post office, who could be required to forward a copy to the FBI. Forcing companies like Zfone and Skype, which also uses encryption for peer-to-peer calls, to build in back doors for police access was rejected in the 1990s and would mark a dramatic departure from current practice. And anyone hoping to foil the FBI could download encrypted VoIP software from European firms like Lichtenstein-based Secfone, which sells it for Android phones. "Understanding how this mutation directs the tumour growth gives us a new direction to develop therapies," said Bulun, also the George H. Gardner Professor of Clinical Gynaecology. I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

flymulla

When I want to look at West I look at the East first then comment No wonder India is bleeding nowTHE economic slowdown in India is one of the world’s biggest economic stories, but it is commanding only a modicum of attention in the United States.It may not even look like a slowdown because by developed standards, India’s growth — estimated by the International Monetary Fund at 6.9 percent for 2012 — is still strong. But a slowdown it is: the economy has decelerated from projected rates of more than 8 percent, and negative momentum may bring a further decline. The government reported year-over-year growth in the October-through-December quarter of only 6.1 percent.What is disturbing is that much of the decline in the growth rate is distributed unevenly, with the greatest burden falling on the poor. If the slower rate continues or worsens, many millions of Indians, for another generation, will fail to rise above extreme penury and want. The problems of the euro zone are a pittance by comparison.China commands more attention, but Scott B. Sumner, the Bentley College economist, has pointed out it is India that is likely to end up as the world’s largest economy by the next century. China’s population is likely to peak relatively soon while India’s will continue to grow, so under even modestly optimistic projections the Indian economy will be No. 1 in terms of total size.India also is a potential force for energizing the economies of Bangladesh, Nepal and, perhaps someday, Pakistan and Myanmar . The losses from a poorer India go far beyond the country’s borders; furthermore, the wealthier India becomes, the stronger the allure of democracy in the region. There are poor and they sell toys and the rich buy then complain about the magnets falling off. We are crazy. I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

flymulla

This from India as I try to dig as many as I can to see who does what. Large technology companies have a clear target group in mind when they design initiatives to promote entrepreneurship. Start-ups that engage in these programmes are typically led by founders set on building the next big technology service product. But not Vanajakshi Raveendra Lokhande, the owner of a small business that makes pickles and noodles in the north Karnataka district of Bagalkot. Lokhande, once a manual labourer, was trained by global technology major Hewlett Packard to set up her small business. From partnering with pickle makers, baking units, coaching institutes and also technology start-ups, global firms such as Hewlett-Packard (HP),Google and Microsoft are digging deep into the bottom of the pyramid level as they seek to gain a greater foothold in the small and medium businesses space in the country. "It is a win-win situation for both, as these programmes help us identify new opportunities in emerging markets and build strategies and solutions around that," said Jeannette Weisschuh, who leads Hewlett Packard's entrepreneurship and education initiatives. Lokhande's husband was a daily worker and their monthly income was Rs 2,000. Now she earns ten times that amount as a business owner. Gasoline prices have been falling in recent weeks, but they're still close to their five-year high after climbing steeply for three years. For every penny increase at the pump, $1.4 billion per year leaves our collective pockets, creating a drag on the sluggish “recovery.” Where does it go and what caused the price explosion at the pump? It's a common belief that oil prices are set on the world market by supply and demand. Less supply and/or more demand causes prices to rise. Oil is getting harder to find; OPEC is holding back supply; China and India are guzzling it up; Iran is threatening to blow it up. And regulations are getting in the way of drill, baby, and drill -- end of story. But this fixation on blind market forces ignores the fact that Wall Street is financialising the commodities markets – especially oil – as it seeks new ways to pick our pockets. The same greedy swindlers who puffed up the housing bubble and then milked it dry are now hard at work doing the same with gasoline. To UK Samsung launches the Galaxy S III as the official smartphone of the London Olympics
I think it is a time for many to sit back and remember, we had a good laugh at the Korean missile fizzing but now we must say. NO there is something even UK asks now. Shows one thing. Never climb up the stairs and never climb down the people, both are bad for heart and all. Are we not the cruel of the cruels?Michael Jackson will rise from the dead to feature in a new advertising campaign for Pepsi. The campaign, called "Live For Now”, is the latest in a long line of Pepsi ads to feature pop icons, with stars such as Madonna, Britney Spears, Pink and even MJ himself making advertisements for the soft drink company. The global campaign coincides with the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's multiplatinum album Bad, offering exclusive remixes from the album on collector’s edition cans. While it may be a cute idea, it may stir up some (literally) painful memories. Michael Jackson famously suffered severe burns while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. It's widely believed that Michael's reported addiction to painkillers developed following this event. Nevertheless it is great to see Michael is not forgotten and his music is forever timeless. Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor. -James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)
I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

Pooja_Deshpande

I hate laws of any kind.

It takes just one person to do something stupid, then a law is made to prevent it which puts millions to discomfort (mostly those who have no antisocial inclinations), only to have the really enterprising circumvent the existing law ... and there we go again.

flymulla in reply to Pooja_Deshpande

We voters like simple stuff. We like clear messages. There is no clarity of purpose about Cameron. Forget Osborne, and Clegg, it's Cameron the voters want to understand. What does he stand for? Big Society? What the heck is that? He is a non-politician to most of us. A fudge. A man trying to be liked by too many people. Is he for Europe or against it? Is he a true Tory or a pseudo Tory only interested in gay marriage if he thinks it will go down well? Is he another Blair, in other words? A will o' the wisp. There's no conviction about him. And that is deeply unsettling for people who grew up in the Thatcher era, and grew to grudgingly respect her, and those younger voters who became tired of New Labour's smugness. I'm not saying lurch to the right or left, I'm just saying this Coalition is failing to connect with the people. You're never going to sell the idea of austerity unless the people fully understand why we need austerity. Where is the proof? There is none, so Cameron has to show more passion and communicate with the people that this is his Falklands. That he will die for the cause. Rather than saying Balls is wrong or reminding us that Brown got us in this mess, he needs to show why he is so convinced he is right. And he needs to do that over and over again, because most of us harbour a suspicion that he's winging it. He needs to develop a really simple, coherent narrative. Say loud and clear that less state, less tax, less red tape, less obstacles to growth is working elsewhere - Scandinavia, for instance - and that it will work here. But he can't say he believes in less state then have ministers continually meddling and interfering. It doesn't feel like he's letting the people get on with it, it feels like we're not quite trusted to do the right thins. If he believes less tax is the key to growth he needs to get Clegg fully onside or start playing hardball and tell Cable to stick it where the sun don't shine. If the people think the LibDems are holding Cameron back they will back him and turn on Clegg. Who's in charge? Respect won in Bradford because Galloway, whether you like him or not, is a great communicator. He keeps it simple. Boris won in London, partly because Ken is vile but also because he seems brave, honest and trustworthy. He also understands people better than his fellow Old Etonians. When all is muddy, Boris's shock of blond hair and transparency shines through with great clarity. We feel he would fight for London, fight for us. Whereas Cameron is just a cipher, a mystery, neither nor there, a dull fudge of a man. A typical politician. These are not times for ordinary people. It's time for leaders of character. I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

Argie57

Lasting Records:

Sumerian cuneiform script carved in stone (4,500 years)
Edwin Smith Papyrus - Oldest surgical document (3,600 years)
Printed books (600 years)
Floppy Disk (30 years)
VHS Tape (20 years)
CD (10 years)
Hard-Drive (5 years)
Lifespan of a Server (10 years+?) Server Technical support (?)

We are doomed

clippy in reply to Argie57

Don't conflate physical carriers of digital content with the digital objects themselves. Yes hard drives have a short life span – yes servers die. But the fact is that the digital objects themselves are the carriers – not the physical infrastructure. One can reliably migrate digital objects across infrastructure upgrades, and distributed infinitely without degradation of quality. Compare that to film – paper – stone tablets. Apples and oranges IMO.

Jon Tilbury

History flushed
The digital age promised vast libraries, but they remain incomplete

Congratulations to the economist for covering the challenges of digital preservation and producing an excellent and easy to understand article. One aspect that justifies further development is the digital divide and how to address it.

As the article captures rich countries, (following the Library of Congress, most national libraries in rich countries now have some sort of digital-archiving programme. In Britain, for instance, the National Archives keeps copies of all government websites. The British Library is archiving all British online material.) do have digital archiving projects, some of which I have had the privilege to work on(http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/567.htm). As UNESCO notes unfortunatelty only rich countries have the means to do this.
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/ifap/meetings/bureau/Proposal%203%20Open%20Source%20Software%20for%20Digital%20Preservation%20and%20Data%20Management%20(1).pdf

Widening access to digital preservation is a hard issue for the community as the UNESCO article argues.  We are currently investigating if a cloud based solution can change this: http://www.digital-preservation.com/lowering-barriers-to-entry-for-digit...

Jon Tilbury

History flushed
The digital age promised vast libraries, but they remain incomplete

Congratulations to the economist for covering the challenges of digital preservation and producing an excellent and easy to understand article. One aspect that justifies further development is the digital divide and how to address it.

As the article captures rich countries, (following the Library of Congress, most national libraries in rich countries now have some sort of digital-archiving programme. In Britain, for instance, the National Archives keeps copies of all government websites. The British Library is archiving all British online material.) do have digital archiving projects, some of which I have had the privilege to work on(http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/567.htm). As UNESCO notes unfortunatelty only rich countries have the means to do this.
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/ifap/meetings/bureau/Proposal%203%20Open%20Source%20Software%20for%20Digital%20Preservation%20and%20Data%20Management%20(1).pdf

Widening access to digital preservation is a hard issue for the community as the UNESCO article argues.  We are currently investigating if a cloud based solution can change this: http://www.digital-preservation.com/lowering-barriers-to-entry-for-digit...

the unexamined life

Even with only drips and drabs coming through, the torrent of data being amassed today makes archiving it all a monumental effort. If regulatory hurdles were somehow overcome, the amount of data involved could create demand for possibly millions of new archivists. How's that for some stimulus?

Jim Boulton

The web is just 20 years old, yet we now can't imagine our lives without it. Alarmingly, the work of the groundbreaking pioneers of the 90's, that defined our new culture, is on the verge of disappearing. Unless we act now, this recent artistic, commercial and social history will be discarded on redundant media, never to be seen again.

The British Library and other similar institutions do a great job but they are certainly not archiving all online material. A collective effort is required by indiviuals, digital agencies, industry and government to preserve this groundbreaking work while we still can.

I curate an exhibition that highlights this important issue, some information about which can be found at www.storyworldwide.com/digital-archaeology, and there are many other notable initiatives:

EUROPE
www.webarchive.org.uk - The British Library
www.netpreserve.org - European body coordinated by The British Library
www.internetmemory.org - European Foundation
www.archivethe.net - Spin-off of above
www.liwa-project.eu - Living Web Archives
www.dpconline.org - Digital Preservation Coalition

US
www.archive.org - AKA the Wayback Machine
www.digitalpreservation.gov - Library of Congress
www.momentoweb.org - Los Alamos National Laboratory
www.archiveteam.org - Rescuing GeoCities
www.computerhistory.org - US Museum

Grab that code from your old zip discs, hard drives, cd and tapes while you still can!

lynn98109

This isn't a new problem. How many cave drawings have been decoded for the information they contain?

Even well-developed systems, such as Inca quipus, have been destroyed willy-nilly by the ignorant.

B Walton

It is odd how the Winchester book (forerunner of the Doomsday book) is thrown up as an examplar of data collection. The purpose was taxation, the response was, almost certainly, to avoid the Normans' knowing what everyone had. Under the privatisation of water supply and sewerage services in England and Wales (1989), the then regulator and grandly entitled Director General of Water Services (and his mob OFWAT)introduced confidence grading in an attempt to pin down the quality of information presented by companies in their annual returns. The stuff in the Winchester Book would not have scored highly on the measures of proven method and extent of collection so we are perhaps no worse off in the electronic age than we were in those earlier days of written history.

Barry Walton

guest-isjlnim

Archivists and electronic records managers have been addressing digital obsolescence since the late 1960s (Charles Dollar); increasingly so as the rate of change has increased this century. It is a ongoing challenge.

I am happy to see The Economist articulating and discussing digital preservation.

Tom Munzer

Has anyone yet gotten around the ticking of the digital degradation clock? I mean we can copy, convert, reformat, replicate, or migrate but once we do, the degradation clock starts to tick again. What does this say for the volume of material that will need to be migrated, say, 20 years from now? Are any of these actions, therefore, a truly long term solution? Are there any alternatives?

William Kilbride

It's really good to see the economist giving some profile to this issue which governments and regulators have been slow to respond to.

This is not simply a question of cultural memory, it's also about business continuity and ongoing exploitation of the value which are embedded in digital resources. For example, by making informed decisions and efforts about what to keep, a digital preservation strategy also helps companies and institutions be confident about what they need to priorize and what they can afford to ditch. That makes information resources more responsive and business processes which depend on them more efficient.

The conclusion: digital preservation is not just about memory institutions and it brings long-term and immediate benefits.

There's a small coalition of agencies working on this problem in the UK and Ireland, and if you want to find out more, then have a look at: http://www.dpconline.org/

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