It's good Slashdot's Paying Attention (Click link here)

Because, really, ...

No. I won't be sarcastic. This is definitely an important issue, and it is actually one of the main reasons why so many people work in digitization in archives; one should ask the question, "How much has been lost?" just to address the digital record of the past, say, fifteen years. (In a very short time, it's scary to realize how much has either been lost or is inaccessible due to lack of proper information regarding the digital artifact.)

And a question I have been considering for the past few months: What ought we to save? Should we, realistically, scramble to save every bit and byte out there for the sake of preservation of information?

My thoughts are thus:
1) What do we have from, say, 550-1066AD England? The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, the Seafarer, lots of Anglo-Saxon translations of Latin biblical verses, Beowulf. I think it is fair to say that what we have left is rich and important, but if I could take a time machine to see what the world was like then, aye, there's the rub. So the next question is . . .

2) What ought we to save to give future human beings a fair perspective of the years, say, 2000-2010AD? Would/should we save more than what we have left of dark age England? I think so, yes, but then I have to ask

3) Should curators of cultural memory make value judgments based upon the need to provide a "fair and impartial" view of life on Earth, in the United States, in the year 2008?

I ask these questions because I sincerely don't believe we should be saving everything on the green earth; but I know also that people become terrified when they hear the idea, "Someone's going to choose to take a snapshot of this time and this place, and that is all the future will know of it." Why do people duck under the table when a person pulls out a camera at a party? They don't want a record of their having been there? They don't want a record of frazzled hair and lipstick teeth?

Of what value is an archival record if value judgments are made in compiling it? And, conversely, of what value is an archival record if no value judgments are made in compiling it?

I wonder what people would want to save if they were asked to save a digital something.

(Of course, now I'm thinking about the websites I used to love to visit. One of my favorites that is long gone was Mail-A-Malady. It was a horrible little website, perfect for torturing friends.)