“Adactio: Journal—Hope”

“For each year back in time, the probability of a link still working decreases until there’s nothing but decay.”

The web is a wasting medium—our words begin to fade at the slightest hint of sunlight.

@baldur At least we know that now. They should have told us sooner.

@baldur For every article like this there’s another about the explosive growth of the world’s data asking how we’ll manage so much of it.

I get frustrated by broken links too, but I wonder if there’s value in letting some things decay. Not everything is worth keeping.

@artkavanagh Yeah, it is what it is and knowing that sooner would have been nice.

@fgtech It’s a bit of an issue for cultural discourse, though. Which is an issue for most things digital, not just the web. There are a lot of landmark iOS apps and games that are no longer available anywhere. Which means that a lot of modern takes on the history of interactive media will be as good as fictional.

Same with modern analysis of specific slices of web history. Too many of the primary sources are gone.

@baldur Agreed. The current model of publishing on the web simply does not hold up over time, and this is a serious problem for historical analysis.

As I said, some things are not worth keeping. Others are. We have no systems on the web for sorting out which is which.