Through an archive mailing list the RCSI Heritage Collections receives unusual, thought provoking, amusing and sometimes really weird articles about all things archives. Edge of your seat stuff! Recently a couple of articles have got us thinking about future generations looking back at our time on this earth.
Will they be able to open the discs, USB, hard drives we currently use to store our memories, photos, thoughts?
Will they be able to read the emails we have saved, the drafts of stories we have written, the letters we have typed and sent?
Computers have come along way and so has the software we use on them. Just take a look below at some of the hardware used over the decades!
Vint Cerf, co-creator of the internet, and a group of like minded computer techies are joining together to try and create an online system that will archive itself. They want it to include the good and the bad of the internet.
In historic archives you get what the person or institute wanted to be archived and remembered. But you also get the juicy gossip in diaries, correspondence, notebooks that people forgot about and is archived just the same. The intentionally and unintentionally archived material combined gives a more realistic picture of what time was like at that exact period in history.
So all those videos of you falling off your chair, performing crazy dance moves at weddings, photos of what you are about to eat and posts giving out about the unreality of reality stars will be archived. You have been warned!
To read more about Vint Cerf's idea and what he and his team are doing to try and prevent a 'digital dark age' read the articles below.
The Inventors of the Internet are Trying to Build a Truly Permanent Web
Archiving the Internet: How Historians Can Help #SaveTheWeb
The Wayback Machine
- Researched and written by Meadhbh Murphy
Will they be able to open the discs, USB, hard drives we currently use to store our memories, photos, thoughts?
Will they be able to read the emails we have saved, the drafts of stories we have written, the letters we have typed and sent?
Computers have come along way and so has the software we use on them. Just take a look below at some of the hardware used over the decades!
 |
| ENIAC World War II computer |
 |
| Ferranti Pegasus Computer 1950s/1960s |
 |
| ISC colour computer 1980s |
 |
| Early Microsoft laptop |
 |
| Apple computer 1982 |
 |
| Tablet used by millions today |
Vint Cerf, co-creator of the internet, and a group of like minded computer techies are joining together to try and create an online system that will archive itself. They want it to include the good and the bad of the internet.
In historic archives you get what the person or institute wanted to be archived and remembered. But you also get the juicy gossip in diaries, correspondence, notebooks that people forgot about and is archived just the same. The intentionally and unintentionally archived material combined gives a more realistic picture of what time was like at that exact period in history.
So all those videos of you falling off your chair, performing crazy dance moves at weddings, photos of what you are about to eat and posts giving out about the unreality of reality stars will be archived. You have been warned!
To read more about Vint Cerf's idea and what he and his team are doing to try and prevent a 'digital dark age' read the articles below.
The Inventors of the Internet are Trying to Build a Truly Permanent Web
Archiving the Internet: How Historians Can Help #SaveTheWeb
The Wayback Machine
- Researched and written by Meadhbh Murphy