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In the blink of an eye

Over the years and decades since the internet was created, data has been accumulating.

There are many repositories of valuable information that have slowly grown to become irreplaceable collections of knowledge, images and experiences.

This is one of the internet's greatest strengths and I expect that future historians will find this data a goldmine of indicators as to the evolution of society, technology and mankind as a whole.

Unfortunately, although these repositories require years or decades to be built, they can be erased in the blink of an eye.

Right now, that could be the face of one such repository and it's all down to corporate cost-savings.

Over at Amazon.com, it seems that cutting costs is the mantra of the day.

"A penny saved is twopence earned" seems to be Bezos's sermon of the day so not only is the giant corporation laying off staff at an extraordinary rate but now he's trimming some of the less profitable bits of web realestate Amazon has picked up in the past.

Just the other day it was announced that the DPReview website is getting the chop.

For those unfamiliar with DPReview, it's a site dedicated to digital photography and apparently includes reviews, comparisons, forums and a raft of other content (both editorial and user-generated) that has been a focal point for many in that community for quite some time.

Perhaps it's not generating enough profit for the beancounters at Amazon, as increasingly people find that their smartphones are "good enough" so the demand for digital cameras has waned over the years. Or maybe it just just doesn't reach the profit threshold needed to qualify for the Amazon inventory of web properties these days.

Whatever the reason, many of its regular users are unhappy with the decision and social media is alive with discussion on the matter. Some leading photographers and influencers have said they'll never buy another product from Amazon in retaliation -- although I don't think Bezos will lose any sleep over that.

There is talk of staff or others trying to organise a buy-out and rescue of the site but so far nothing concrete has emerged. If the site does simply get switched off it will be a huge loss and a sobering reminder that digital data can be lost in the blink of an eye... no matter how long it took to accumulate nor how large it has become.

Which brings us to another topic of hot debate...

The Internet Archive is a fantastic resource, especially The Wayback Machine.

This gives us a window into the history of the world wide web, as it was at any particular point in the past. Without this fantastic site we'd have already lost some incredibly valuable material to bit-rot and commercial imperatives.

Sadly, The Internet Archive is being sued by book publishers for its archiving and "lending" of copyrighted publications.

If successful, this suit could deal a significant blow to the archive and perhaps even imperil the fine work it has done archiving the present and the past.

Due to the sheer scale of the web, creating and maintaining an archive is a gargantuan task. According to the site's about page it has already stored 735 billion webpages and who knows what that number will be in another decade's time.

In my opinion, there should be some pretty solid, guaranteed funding in place for a resource like this but it seems to be coming from an adhoc list of supporting organisations. I do worry that one day even the Internet Archive itself will be switched off and we'll have destroyed the early history of what's turned out to be the biggest thing since the invention of the printing press.

Sometimes... you don't know what you've got till it's gone"

Carpe Diem folks!

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