The Domesday Irony
A Lesson in Digital Obsolescence
Over the last decade or so, there has been a curious new addition to our amalgamation of clutter accumulating in our closets, under our beds, and - for those of us lucky enough to have them - in our basements and attics.
These clutter piles are our old electronics.
These data graves consist of our old discarded plastic in the form of computers, laptops, digital cameras, and old cell phones, along with the mess of unidentified cords and headphones that accompanies it. It’s almost hard to imagine that just last year, or last month, these were once some of our most expensive and cherished prize possessions. At the time these items were functioning in full swing, we couldn’t imagine life without them.
And then we upgraded. We came home from the store, excited about our new toy and immediately put our old pieces of plastic in a neat little pile somewhere in the corner and valiantly swore we would get those pictures off those drives and transfer them to our newest gadget, or even save them on a portable hard drive as soon as we picked one up at the store the next day.
And then we never did. And then technology changed and evolved at lightening speed, and now we aren’t even sure how to transfer — (or, using info-speak, “migrate”) this information.
These devices are little time capsules of our past, each still holding pictures, old school work, professional writing, and other information that just hangs out on the cold and abandoned hard drives and memory cards inside of those heaps of plastic. No big deal, right? Who really needs photo albums that never get looked at or boxes of old papers anyway? Sad, but acceptable. However, what if governments and institutions that spent millions of dollars in resources and time on important research and projects did the same thing? Not sad — it’s scary.
In 1986, BBC launched the Domesday Project. In collaboration with a few computer companies, they celebrated the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book by creating an electronic, modern day version. The original Domesday Book was a survey of the new territory acquired by William of Normandy in 1086. The book survived almost completely in tact and readable for almost 1,000 years.
That’s a millennium. That’s a long time.
The new, electronic sister project, consisted of ONE MILLION contributions from British adults and children on British geography, history and daily life in 1986, and was stored on the most cutting edge technology of the time — a Laser-Disc. A special Laser-Disc, in fact, that had to be read by a very specific computer. (Van der Heiden)
What, pray-tell, is a laser-disc, you might ask? Well, it was an ingenious storage medium in the 1980’s that was firmly believed to be able to stand the test of time. Fast forward thirty years later, and no one even remembers what laser-discs were or how one would even access the disc.
When I first read about this curious test of digital preservation and realized the impact of digital obsolescence, I was overcome with shock and the feeling of someone punching me in my face. As a trained historian, this type of potential data loss immediately brings on cold sweats and instant visions of the Library of Alexandria in flames.
Luckily — although there was a scare around the turn of the century that the data was actually lost, (McKie, 2002) — there has since been significant attention and efforts made to make sure the Domesday collection became accessible again and preserved for our collective memory. However, what about the digital data that does not have quite as much attention and funding to back its preservation?
Digital material is fragile, corruptible, and not at all tangible. As we trek even further down the road of technological progress, exchanging cd readers and hard drive storage for storage on the internet, it is of utmost importance that we keep a critical perspective on preservation issues, especially digital obsolescence. The data might be good, but it might just become unreadable. (Hirsch, 338)
There is no doubt in my mind that progress should be celebrated and embraced. Nonetheless, as we forge ahead, dumping our codex filled stacks in exchange for ethereal and ephemeral data that is floating, quite literally, in the clouds, we should be at least a little wary.
For the sake of the future and respecting our collective cumulative human knowledge, we must be certain we are not just blindly following the idealized appeal of progress like lemmings off the ledge of reality and into a modern day, self-inflicted information dark age.
Resource List:
Hirsh, Sandra. Information Services Today. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Print. (338)
McKie, Robin, and Vanessa Thorpe. March 3, 2002. “Digital Domesday Book Lasts 15 Years Not 1000”. The Guardian. Accessed November 8, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning.
Van Der Heiden, Karin. “The Unreadable Domesday Book”. Bits to Pieces. (April 5, 2012.) Accessed November 8, 2015: www.bitstopieces.org
