On 12/21/2017 12:06 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Internet Archive and the like are great resources, and I support their works, but they are still a "cathedral entity." If they disappear, we lose a LOT! If for some unfortunate reason they collapse, we're stuck with a lot of rebuilding of the archive as a community. Volunteers keeping torrents would not only distribute many recoverable duplicates of the overall content, but will also allow for a quick recovery of the whole.
I don't understand "torrents", and don't need to. They seem to amount to copying and Web distribution of archived content in an active real-time way.
It's a tool like any other. But it has nothing to do with "web", just FYI.
Seems to me, there's no shortage of people who are obsessed with copying vintage archives and making them available - their way. Whatever technology they choose to that end, is up to them. That said, others say "I won't bother to obtain this manual, someone else has preserved it". A problem of excess.
I think a lot of people learned from what happened with the Don Maslin archive. We are very lucky that it was eventually recovered.
Torrents, blockchain, distributed file systems - all "hammers" looking for a "nail", in my opinion as an engineer among other engineers. I'm scanning manuals and making them available, thank you, and I have my own tools. When my "cathedral" falls, the people who got my content, will resurrect it; and I may provide for other "cathedrals" too; and for what was in mine. Thanks for reminding me of this issue.
Please forgive me for saying so, but this is a very curmudgeonly attitude. Just because a tool is new, doesn't necessarily mean that it's useless. Further, none of these things are even all that new. People are now starting to find new applications for blockchain technology, in particular for data preservation and insurance of immutability. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. If you don't want to participate in it, don't, and that's ok. But I for one am convinced that that's how this stuff will be preserved in the future. And with ever-shortening "SQUIRREL!" attention spans, and millennial and post-millennials thinking transient content is just fine, and "oh, it'll be there" being the prevalent attitude amongst people 20-40yrs younger than us, this is an important and valuable thing. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA