sometimes I am so damn eloquent – or sumthin’

I do keep all this stuff – on CD-ROM. Gig’s and gig’s of e-mail and newsgroups
and mailing lists going back to when I started on the Internet. Not really
to have ‘leverage’ – there isn’t any real point.

• The people who lie don’t ever admit to it even when you have the old
  posts
• The people who simply flip opinions to suit their purposes will never
  care they flipped
• Everyone who spends any time listening to them already knows they
  are liars and weasels 🙂

So no, leverage isn’t really the issue.

It’s more about permanency. I don’t trust any data that isn’t on a
media I control to be there tomorrow. I live in a electromagnetic
soup – and I always have.

One of the most significant events in human history was the externalization
of information – books and writing. Suddenly what was ‘known’ was not
limited to what one could hold in ones head or the heads of the people
in his village/clan. Knowledge became a vastly more important resource
when it could be put down in a form that wouldn’t die as easily as people.

Then, another shift happened… one that hits those of my generation
and subculture (geeks 🙂 ) harder than anyone else for now – we realize it more.

With the advent of widespread computer communication external knowledge
became something you could mold and shape in a instant. You could see
the patterns, compare and contrast and access much more information than
ever before. The size of the external ‘brain’ of a human became much,
much larger and much more powerful.

It gave and still gives some of us an incredible advantage in the modern
world.

There is just one problem. Knowledge is fragile again. Tools I rely on
every day (slashdot.org,
everything2.com,
google.com and others) are out of
my control. They are important to my lifestyle and knowledge base – but
they are fragile again and can disappear in an instant.

To those of us dependent on out extended memories this is a very disturbing
thought.

So I burn it to CD-ROM. Lots and lots of stuff. All the e-mail, most
of my mailing lists, gigabytes of images. I also routinely grab copies
of entire websites and stuff them on CD-ROM. Usually I update those copies
every month or two.

To me and many computer types I know this is simple common sense. If
it’s important to you, back it up locally!

To those who wonder WHY I would care about, say, Dominion posts going
back years the answer is how would you feel if I just vaporized a big
chunk of your memory – even if it was ‘silly’ data you didn’t need. Would
you voluntarily let me amputate part of your brain that way?

I doubt it.

I am used to being able to all my major communications and conversations
in a short period of time going back most of my entire life. Where most
people aren’t used to that – I am. I am very used to being able to instantly
pull up even the most vaguely remembered letter to an old friend or an
argument I had with someone 10 years ago.

You might not be, but many of those I know in my generation have never
known it any other way. We simply assume that we will always be able to
access all our data.

Not just current data.

But EVERY item of data we have EVER had access to.

So I back it all up – and not for any reason as shallow as to win an
argument with someone on a mailing list who couldn’t be convinced of the
truth if they saw themselves on video tape saying whatever it was. I back
it all up because it is all part of my mind in a way. I depend on it,
and it lets me do some truly amazing things with my cognitive skills.

I would not voluntarily give that up.

I am rereading1984
at the moment, and the point is very clear. If >you< don’t control
an independent copy of history, you are at the mercy of those who do.