Retweeted
So today I read this: the Library of Congress will be archiving all public tweets for historical purposes. At first I thought what I'm sure everyone thought at first, something along the lines of "srsly doodz?" Because what the hell kind of historical value does my tweet about missing Glee, or how I'm bored at work have? And more than that, what value does whatever stupid hashtag meme of the moment have?
Now, don't get me wrong, I love twitter. I've met some of my best friends through twitter and I'll defend it to the end but I'm not gonna argue that 90% of what's on it total crap. No one really cares about most of it and NO ONE wants to read all that shit. Twitter is mostly garbage. But historians have learned more about past cultures through their trash than in practically any other way. It's entirely possible that this record will become the equivalent of those garbage heaps 500 years from now.
More and more everything about human life is starting to take place on the netmotronz and though the conspiracy theorist in me recoils at the mere idea of something like this, the historian in me can't help but feel like this is a good thing. In a hundred years, twitter, LJ, Blogger, facebook, ALL of the sites where we do our networking today will probably no longer exist and the records of them are definitely not going to exist. A project that actively preserves the contents of even one of those sites could be invaluable for future historians trying to make sense of what we backwards thinking primitives were like.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love twitter. I've met some of my best friends through twitter and I'll defend it to the end but I'm not gonna argue that 90% of what's on it total crap. No one really cares about most of it and NO ONE wants to read all that shit. Twitter is mostly garbage. But historians have learned more about past cultures through their trash than in practically any other way. It's entirely possible that this record will become the equivalent of those garbage heaps 500 years from now.
More and more everything about human life is starting to take place on the netmotronz and though the conspiracy theorist in me recoils at the mere idea of something like this, the historian in me can't help but feel like this is a good thing. In a hundred years, twitter, LJ, Blogger, facebook, ALL of the sites where we do our networking today will probably no longer exist and the records of them are definitely not going to exist. A project that actively preserves the contents of even one of those sites could be invaluable for future historians trying to make sense of what we backwards thinking primitives were like.