Will We Enter a Digital Dark Age?

One of the ‘founding fathers’ of the Internet, Vint Cerf (co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols), warns that most of the data being saved today in the cloud, USB drives, hard drives, discs, etc. will be inaccessible in 100 years due to advanced technology of the 22nd century making today’s technology obsolete. The 21st century will become a dark age due to all the data being lost.

Vint Cerf Warns of Digital Dark Age

Certainly a lot of data was lost during the transition from 3.5 inch floppies to CD-ROMs, and, yes, I know this from personal experience. But many of us learned that lesson and have become better stewards of our digital files, regularly backing them up and transitioning them from one new technology to the next. Surely some data will be lost along the way like a crumbling cookie, but it will be mostly the careless and ill-planned who will lose their digital past. Yes, technology available 100 years from now will be completely unusable with today’s ports and drives, but most of us who are responsible will make the necessary transfers along the way.

As for public data on the web, the Way Back Machine at Archive.org already copies and stores most well-known websites today. Researchers in the 22nd century will be able to see how Yahoo! looked in 1996 until its inevitable demise this century. On the marco level, so much is being archived that little will be lost. On the micro level, many individuals will lose their digital history but that will be their own fault for not preserving their past. And, in a sense, this is no different as it has ever been with failure to store film photographs and/or paintings in cool places and out of direct sunlight. The method of preservation changes, but ultimately it’s the human will and foresight that determines whether it will be saved for posterity.

Originally posted: http://www.mccarthyism.com/2015/20150218_Vint-Cerf-Warns-of-Digital-Dark-Age.htm

Firestorm Over Brian Williams Not Being Under Fire

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams has come under fire from critics for claiming to be under fire in Iraq over 10 years ago when in reality he was never in harm’s way. His original report from the field was accurately reported, but over time his story became embellished into a tall tale with his chopper coming under serious enemy fire. There are a number of amazing things about this story and the brouhaha now surrounding it. First is that the story of making up a sotry took so long to come out in public. The military guys in the chopper with Williams left notes to the news media that the story being told by Williams was completely untrue, but the guys never got a call back. That’s just lazy journalism not following up a lead, disrespecting the guys in uniform for not being credible without even interviewing them, or simply protecting a fellow reporter. Take your pick, they’re all bad looks for the news media.

The second fascinating issue was Williams’s horrendous non-apology. He made the situation worse by not coming clean and just saying he embellished a good story into a great one by putting himself into the action environment first-hand. Of course, that’s a stupid thing to do, but at least understandable from the perspective of the human proclivity for self-aggrandizement in the public eye. Instead Williams said he conflated the two events over time: that is, within his mind, his location moved from the chopper that arrived with no damage and no combat to the one that arrived half an hour earlier with a significant combat engagement. It would seem either he is lying (knows what he is saying is false but is trying to come up with an excuse that he believes will absolve him), or he is quite delusional. Either one reflects poorly on a man sitting in the anchor chair with the ad slogan of “being the most trusted man in news.” Generally, I am against calling for someone’s head when they make a mistake and own up to it, but when you don’t come clean and just obfuscate further, then you lose my sympathies. Williams just doesn’t belong in the anchor chair any longer and should be reassigned to another duty within the NBC organization.

Originally posted: www.mccarthyism.com/2015/20150206.htm