Crazy person trying to save everything on the Internet here (at least, a few sections of it.)
It was actually when the Trump administration basically gutted and removed the whole of the EPA's website that caused me to take notice. I realized that while my written notes from a decade ago were still around and usable, every digital note I'd made more than a year or two ago was gone.
Our knowledge culture has changed from memorizing facts to knowing how to get to facts. Information also no longer flows down from a "chosen few" who have the means to publish, but instead from everyone at just about all times.
Archiving is also no longer a horrifically complicated or expensive hobby. There's no reprinting books on archive paper or storing them in helium. Instead you can simply buy a stack of hard drives and start bulk storing data.
Since getting involved, I've come to realize that data goes offline frequently, with no warning - extensively due to bad copyright claims. I can't really fix the copyright process (at least, not very quickly), but I can help save the data and help make it available to others in meaningful formats.
It was actually when the Trump administration basically gutted and removed the whole of the EPA's website that caused me to take notice. I realized that while my written notes from a decade ago were still around and usable, every digital note I'd made more than a year or two ago was gone.
Our knowledge culture has changed from memorizing facts to knowing how to get to facts. Information also no longer flows down from a "chosen few" who have the means to publish, but instead from everyone at just about all times.
Archiving is also no longer a horrifically complicated or expensive hobby. There's no reprinting books on archive paper or storing them in helium. Instead you can simply buy a stack of hard drives and start bulk storing data.
Since getting involved, I've come to realize that data goes offline frequently, with no warning - extensively due to bad copyright claims. I can't really fix the copyright process (at least, not very quickly), but I can help save the data and help make it available to others in meaningful formats.