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Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

Dunno. History matters and historians would probably strongly disagree. Some things are more important than you think.

Too much gets lost too easily.

Not everything is deserving of being treated as historical artifacts worthy of retention. A friend has lamented that when he was in college in the late 80s, he used USENET as a way to connect with people and work through some pretty heavy emotional challenges. Retaining his personal struggles is hardly "history" - if anything, the historical value of retaining the struggles of one inconsequential person is far lower than the direct impact a google search has on his life today. So as you said, some things aren't as important as you think - in his case, privacy and respect are a bit more important than a historical record of a teenager seeking people to talk to. Every minute detail of history isn't as important as you think.

You'd be surprised from what is considered history. Nowadays, insights into the lives and emotions of ordinary people are considered invaluable tool in recreating the past: the context in which political, economical, and cultural developments happened. In fact, the spontaneous nature of certain artifacts makes them more valuable, because what we would call "official history" is always editorialized and subject to the influence of only few people and not produced by the entire society it originates from.

It is something that I've thought about - the contradiction between privacy and the need to communicate yourself to the generations to come and the broadcast into the void it requires. If your friend is okay with his privacy in the archives, he might be glad to know that in hundred years, there will be an AI whose PHD will be on the emotional significance of new technologies in the lives of early adopters of the Internet, the case of user John Smith 1988.

I think the biggest difference/problem is that these people are still alive in many cases, whereas the authors of historical letters are not. This is a big difference, I think.

O, yes, I agree. It would be ideal if peoples actions are like state archives (accessible 50 years after the fact). However, I wanted to underline how inconsequential people actually matter in history.

Once you publicly post something, or even post something privately to someone else, it’s not entirely yours anymore, in an important sense it’s theirs.

Yes Usenet used to gave a spool lifetime, but that was clearly variable and there were no guarantees about it. Anybody could set up a mirror and frequently did. Also anyone could copy out content to other media and there was no expectation that they couldn’t do that.

We are all responsible for what we post to other people and in some cases also the effect it has on them. Consider bullying, abuse, criminal conspiracy, the record of receiving a message belongs to the receiver not the sender.

Every single minute detail is exactly equally important, because you, nor I, nor anyone, has any idea what will be important or why it will be important.

To a sociologist

connect with people and work through some pretty heavy emotional challenges

is a goodmine and insight into history.

Not sure why the sociologist’s desires should take precedence over the original posters’.

When pompeii was discovered we saw into homes 1,000 years ago. Without any regard to privancy for those covered in rock we broadcast their lives around the globe.

I don't think we give a lot of weight to what the original publishing intent was for anything published 100, 200 years ago, why would the change in the future?

Hence the old joke, "At what point does graverobbing become archaeology?"

When you can publish it?

Without publishing it rather becomes tomb raiding even after thousands of years

100 years ago is very different than thirty-years ago.

I think, judging what is going to be of value for people in the future is a much harder problem than you make it out to be.

Yep, see sociologists and archaeologists excitement over finding things like clay tablets with shopping lists or recipes on.

And yet Eric Schmidt says (2010)* we should change our name... Because everything is always kept

https://m.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/google-ceo-eric-schmid...

* It's ironic I'm referring to a 10yr old piece to refer to the danger of continuous archives.

In 2001, it was Scott McNealy :

https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200108/df20010808.jp...

If you are not familiar with Dr. Fun: Don Knuth Finally Sells Out https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200002/df20000210.jp...

Not really, that information gradually gets bit-rot and evaporates away to nothingness as website after website gets old and vanishes.

In the early days of the Internet, I often used to Google/AltaVista/Jeeves my own name. There used to be quite a few hits. Over the years, those old hits have just faded away.

That doesn't necessarily mean they disappeared, although chances are probably better that they did than didn't. Google has increasingly started incorporating recency in how it ranks search results, so if it's more than a few years old it'll fade away from Google results regardless if it's still around or not.

if it's more than a few years old it'll fade away from Google results regardless if it's still around or not.

If you can't find it, it's effectively the same as if it doesn't exist.

>Dunno. History matters and historians would probably strongly disagree.

People don't live or structure their lives to satisfy historians...

People also don't live or structure their lives to satisfy those who had a written conversation and want the copies burned.

Well, they should. Permanent record of every small transgression or juvenile excess or stupidity is inhumane...

What's inhumane is making every small transgression into some stigma that should follow a person around their whole life. I don't think we fix that by erasing all traces of the transgression, which in many cases may be practically impossible.

It's not obvious to me whether changing the view on transgression and stigma is practically possible.

In my experience it's strongly tied to personal experience: if I committed a transgression in my past I'm going to be more understanding towards others doing the same (still depending on the nature of the transgression and my rationalization of it). It's also worth nothing that what constitutes a transgression changes with the times, and often the public seem to forget/ignore this fact and retroactively apply stigma and resentment.

No. I'm struggling to think of a reply better than "Obviously, not."

I think your statement was already implicit in what I was saying. We should move on to the next bit where I say "But..." and you counter it.

Even if this were true, it would be better if the archives were not available for some decades after the original posting. I’m OK with my content being analyzed by historians, but the definition of “historian” presumes some professional detachment that is not available short years after the post was made.

I think even leaving aside historians - the idea of making everything posting transient by default would have robbed us of a lot of stored knowledge. I'm feeling quite bitter about the rise of Slack and Discord over mailing lists and Usenet.

The ease in which one can find clues and solutions to decades old technical questions relies on everything being stored.

And more than just technical issues - I'm no historian but I've wasted endless hours following fascinating discussions from the past that suddenly become relevent because of recent events or unforeseen connections. I love how much is preserved by accident. It makes me slightly sad to think that it might be otherwise and that others would wish it otherwise.

And yet I used to regularly find answers on a Usenet or Google groups mirror with Google. Even sometimes in public irc logs. I have yet to find the answer in a public slack or discord log.

> but the definition of “historian” presumes some professional detachment

The idea of everything you've ever posted becoming part of a giant "digital permanent record" used by data brokers, advertisers, credit bureaus, trolls, nosy people, etc. is somewhat unappealing.

Yet what was always predicted. Followed by homes taking families hostage and we are almost there.

It has to be available for some period of time after posting. Where would you draw the line? Hide them after a few weeks? Months? Years?

Before it becomes history:

Phase 1: hall monitor trolls in coordination with HR use it to keep people in line

Phase 2: the archive is rediscovered as truth about what the world used to be like and suppressed

Phase 3: there is no archive and never was

Phase 4: the archive is rediscovered, hidden and the esoteric knowledge used to start a cult

Phase 5: the cult eventually prevails in society, becomes a religion and suppresses inconvenient parts of the archive

Phase 6: well history repeats itself so why go on?

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