[Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

Fri Oct 20 07:39:08 UTC 2006

GerardM wrote:

>What needs doing:
>
>   - Much information needs to be preserved. Much data that is really
>   precious needs digitizing. So that we will nor suffer another disaster like
>   the burning of the library of Alexandria.
>
It happens all the time.  The earliest US patent records were lost 
because of a patent office fire in the 1830's.  The introduction of 
cheap wood pulp papers in the 1830s led to self-destructing documents.  
The 1890 US census records were lost because of a fire.  The records 
office in Dublin was destroyed during the struggle for independence.  
The 1960 US census became almost unreadable because it was kept on IBM 
punch cards.  Early information relating to space information is 
difficult to use because it was stored on large magnetic disks with a 
fraction of the storage space of a modern CD.  Besides obsolete formats, 
there is the strong risk of magnetic degradation.  Then there's the toll 
from human activity like the looting of the Baghdad museum when Iraq was 
invaded, or ancient manuscripts that were used to wrap food in other 
middle eastern marketplaces.  At least one complete Bach Oratorio was 
among the things lost during allied bombings of Germany during World War II.

Redundancy is likely a key to the preservation of heritage.  Having more 
places hold copies of the information greatly reduces the risk of having 
them completely lost to catastrophic events.  Such projects are not 
cost-effective for businesses whose cost-recovery depends on skimming 
the top of the most popular products.  Governments are too inclined to 
so wrap such projects in bureaucracy that it's a wonder that anything is 
ever accomplished.  Perhaps all governments need to be convinced through 
stark risk analyses that the best survival chance for a lot of priceless 
information is a mass popular effort at digitization and distribution.

>   - Many schools suffer from expensive and often substandard teaching
>   materials. Bringing the best that money can buy into Free resources would
>   help create a generation that grew up with Free content, technology and the
>   associated paradigms.
>
This will take more than just materials.  It will also take teachers 
with the capacity to cope with massive amounts of information, teachers 
who are able to guide their students into the information treasure room 
without having them go mad with riches.

>   - Our infra structure is really cheap. It is outrageously successfull
>   in what it does but as more people start to depend on it and as more
>   functionality / data gets connected, it becomes more fragile. It would be
>   good to remain as cost effective but we do need more giants like Brion, Tim,
>   Mark, Domas ..
>
If we are going to run on a shoestring it should be long enough to be tied.

Ec