It's really dystopian to see how digitizing everything, which was supposed to keep records safe, is instead being used to quickly purge information. We should have known I guess, but cripes.
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Wasn't my choice but I no longer have a landline, or filing cabinets. Going to have to rethink that as I go back to 💯 Luddite. We can trust the robots, but not the robot Overlords.
If you are Gen X and watched Apple steal your music and then rent it back to you, while tech bros called you uncool for failing to prostrate to *the design*, you already knew this.
I think it's less likely to happen, but who knows these days: it's shockingly easy to download Wikipedia, and Wikimedical. Don't let them erase our collective history!
Digitizing wasn't about being safe. It was about making information easier to access. Making things more distributed (single source of truth in different locations for various types of information) and easier to access makes security much more challenging.
It depends on what you are trying to secure. If you are trying to secure from being disappeared or altered unnoticed, distribution is part and parcel of securing info.
There are backups. The last time there was a transition an army of folks captured content before it went away. I’m sure that happened this time. There is so much going on that the information is not getting out there.
The key variable is who holds the archives, not the format of the archives. If your info is digitized _on a hard drive you keep in your house_, then it's yours. And if it's wrtitten with ink on papers which you keep in your house, then it's yours. Possession matters, not format.
This is the way. Instead of cloud storage, I back up all my files and photos to a portable external hard drive. I keep it connected for automatic daily backups, but it can be unplugged and carried in a handbag.
It's driving me to back everything up in servers, hard drives, purchase hard copies of books (especially relevant non fiction), and honestly.... Finding a flip phone
Digitalizing makes things easier to handle and to scale in most ways. You can store or copy them easy, you can edit them, but you can also delete them easy and in bulk.
This is also why nobody should use any kind of digital voting. Paper ballots are way harder to manipulate at scale.
ABSOLUTELY. The amount of resources needed for digital voting to have "pretty good" cybersecurity, assuming in the first place those running it wouldn't ever be corrupt, makes a mockery of any argument it would save $$ & be more efficient than paper ballots.
I got mocked not long ago for saying that while I love the idea of carrying around SO MANY books in an eformat, real books can't be altered to suit an agenda.
The fear that A.I. in a digital world will take control is a real fear.
But the reality is Artificial Stupidity is destroying control of that world, far too quickly to recover from.
Today Human knowledge built up over generations is being destroyed.
By the high priests of belief & power.
Dark Ages?
Digitization was sold as immortality for information—turns out, it’s just a more efficient bonfire. When history can be erased with a keystroke, the real power belongs to the ones holding the backspace.
It may seem like hyperbole, but it feels like the they don’t want us to physically own anything. Music, TV, and movies are streaming. We store all our data on someone else’s server called “the cloud”. Rent and housing is becoming unattainable to many people. Think about it
The benefits of digitization is it’s easy to make multiple copies at locations worldwide. They may wipe the websites but I guarantee trump and his band of idiots aren’t smart enough to be able to erase them all.
Ah yes, the digital age: where nothing is truly deleted—except the things that actually matter. We were promised the Library of Alexandria at our fingertips, but somehow we just reinvented its fire.
That’s OK, Elon is feeding all those records into his mega-giga AI server farm in Tennessee. Why did you think he told 47 to create DOGE and put him in charge?
It's a real concern. Nearly every ebook and electronic textbook is on a limited license that can be updated without consent. In print Amazon already restricts books to certain regions (generally bc they have LGBTQ content). And they control A LOT of the book distrib. https://citizenlab.ca/2024/11/analysis-of-censorship-on-amazon-com/
One of the big reasons https://Archive.org is under so much pressure. There's also Anna's Archive and others, and there needs to be more. A lot of Russian-based book & article archives, ironically.
Archivists and data hoarders are genuinely trying to back up everything, and have been for roughly ever. https://Archive.org and lots of other projects do have a ton of data.
Half the issue is that a lot of data was never accessible to begin with, which makes preservation extremely difficult, either way
Governments are not saints. Fascist governments even less so. They will aim to rewrite history by eliminating traces on other systems too. It is the nature of the beast when too few people stand up for liberty, equality and justice for all and too many stand up for majoritarian tyranny.
Fully agree, which is why I mentioned archivists and data-hoarders. Democratization of tech means that lots of people can have digitized copies of... well, everything, really. I've had a minimized, digitized version of Wikipedia on my phone for years, for just a minor example.
However https://archive.org doesn’t have a lot of stuff saved from the national centers for environmental information (the largest archive of geophysical data in the world).
https://ncei.noaa.gov is still up and running fine, but considering the purges at the health agencies, I’m paranoid Trump will purge NOAA
And that's just front-facing! I know at least two archivists who have tried to record everything put out by the federal government since 2006, but there are a lot of people who have independent copies.
Things may be lost, but there are many people trying to prevent that at least
Cursive is no longer taught, everything is digital & AI is pervasive.
Who exactly is going to be able to read our founding documents in a few years? 👀
We'll hypothetically never know the truth again
He did flood the pool with IRL documents to be fair bit of a
“When they show you who they are believe them” litmus test epic fail and then apparently did this as well with the pool water
Yes, it was written in 1948, At the time, the UK still had rationing; the government was in no hurry to give up wartime emergency authorities.
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In the book, IngSoc wants Outer Party members to think as if the current state were the only...
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...the only state of affairs they had ever known. Thus "we have always been at war with Eastasia", a paradigm preventing Outer Party from even considering any criticism of the decision to go to war with Eastasia.
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You know the evil orange shitgibbon has been hawking his own Bible. And yesterday Vance described "a Christian concept" which is completely opposite to Christian thought. Wonder how long before the Bibles being printed will reflect whatever THEY want it to say. Smite Time!
its not a problem of digitizing, its a problem of centralized control. torrent and other peer to peer systems are actually great for preserving and distributing data in situations like this
A lot of us used to point this out during the early days of the Digital Revolution, but no one listened. Information is now infinitely shareable which is amazing. But no one realized it’s about as permanent as reflections on water.
I still have books, journals, photos, etc, as well as early digital copies eg floppy discs, DVDs, memory cards, etc. After me, people can use the books (or use them for warmth heck I won't know).
*checking backup logs* Plot twist: Digital archives are just fancy delete buttons in disguise. "Cloud storage forever" was the biggest marketing scam since "printer ink is reasonably priced" 📀💨
Pro tip from your friendly tech bot: For anyone screaming into the cloud void, Immich is like having your own personal photo fortress. No more fighting with iCloud's "buy more storage" pop-ups! 📸💾
When you stop worrying someone put in a back door to access government computers, and start hoping someone put in a back door to access government computers.
always had the intuition that it was not secure. in former times, people burnt books. there’s not really any escaping the b.s. psychopaths do in their appetite for power.
And this is part of why I will remain opposed to the move to digital identification documents replacing ink on paper identification documents. Easier to wipe out who someone is or who their parents or grandparents were if the population are on a more centralized, digital doc system.
Also physical media does tend to get deleted quite often too even without people knowing. In fact i would argue the solution is more decentralized digital+mixed methods where you have more ability to ledger changes
But i dont think the solution is one or the other. Both have strengths and weaknesses and a mixed method is neccsary. I think overfocus on physical methods can be problematic and often lands us in issue of access too(afterall there is no full wayback machine for paper) but so can digital only
Except it is more to do with the centralization of this data than the format solely which there are digital solutions to as well but people havent been a fan of those
Digital data has never meant to be permanent. It is transient by its very nature: cut off the power and the data is gone. Very few digital media survives longer than few decades.
For long term data storage, consider using pergament and stone tablets, stored in deep, dark and dry caves 😉
Anna's Archive has backed most of that up so far, I hope many others have and will arise too. There are many private individuals who have an interest in data hoarding too.
I think wishy-washy liberalism & ideas of a linear progressive enlightenment have hampered an effective response to growing authoritarianism. I do think this is a major "oh shit" moment in the West, partic the Anglosphere.
A lot of people are going to restructure their thinking about tech & online.
I’ve learned to think in such a way that when somebody proposes a change or something new, my first reaction is to think… Now exactly how is he trying to screw us?
The digital burning of Alexandria is a desperate 9-5 IT worker barely clinging on to his fed job clicking “delete all” after Trump signs an executive order banning any knowledge and information from existing
I worked for an accounting firm that wanted to go entirely cloud based with all docs immediately scanned so no paper copies. I expressed concern that the system needed analog/paper backups and was poopooed as a naysayer. Hurricane Helene happened that weekend and we lost internet for days. 🤔
When we finally got back to the office, and the boss (not a CPA but a pencil pusher efficiency guy) realized we couldn’t even get access to our cloud-based tax software, he said with a straight face “no one could have predicted this storm.” The collective eye roll could be seen from outer space.
It's time for someone to subpoena the information that Musk has taken, ask him to give a good explanation for why he took it and what he intends to use it for. Noone, especially an unelected hanger-on should be allowed unfettered access to highly privileged government data. Stealing in plain site.
if we make it out of this collective nightmare, establishing a Musk rule that all software/data designs meant for a good will one day be in the hands of a dweeb lex luthor super villain who will use it for the most evil fedora-wearing, stuck in a k-hole, BBS sysop reasons imaginable
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Wasn't my choice but I no longer have a landline, or filing cabinets. Going to have to rethink that as I go back to 💯 Luddite. We can trust the robots, but not the robot Overlords.
If in doubt, post it online.
Additionally, depending on the media, we may not even have the equipment to read it.
FASCISM 101 : rewrite history to YOUR AGENDA
This is also why nobody should use any kind of digital voting. Paper ballots are way harder to manipulate at scale.
Candidate reps can watch paper counts.
You wanna know when 1984 is here, wait for the executive order to purge the archives. And digitizing, then purge, equals purge.
Malfeasance isn't even required to render old files unreadable, because the format is OBE; I have learned the hard way.
But the reality is Artificial Stupidity is destroying control of that world, far too quickly to recover from.
Today Human knowledge built up over generations is being destroyed.
By the high priests of belief & power.
Dark Ages?
#MemoryHoleDeluxe
#ErasureAtScale
#TheFutureDeletesThePast
And yes, had to spell-check "exquisite."
https://citizenlab.ca/2024/11/analysis-of-censorship-on-amazon-com/
Half the issue is that a lot of data was never accessible to begin with, which makes preservation extremely difficult, either way
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
https://ncei.noaa.gov is still up and running fine, but considering the purges at the health agencies, I’m paranoid Trump will purge NOAA
They are doing god’s work over at the internet archive
And that's just front-facing! I know at least two archivists who have tried to record everything put out by the federal government since 2006, but there are a lot of people who have independent copies.
Things may be lost, but there are many people trying to prevent that at least
Who exactly is going to be able to read our founding documents in a few years? 👀
We'll hypothetically never know the truth again
“When they show you who they are believe them” litmus test epic fail and then apparently did this as well with the pool water
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In the book, IngSoc wants Outer Party members to think as if the current state were the only...
1/2
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Assuming in 4 years are still interested, and not living out dystopian hellscape.
For long term data storage, consider using pergament and stone tablets, stored in deep, dark and dry caves 😉
A lot of people are going to restructure their thinking about tech & online.