we will!
I’ve heard that all of my life; I have lived through the birth of the internet, the entire history of the internet, and I’ve heard that all the time. So, tell us, is the internet in fact forever? And if not, in what ways is it not?
I don’t understand why anyone ever thought that that was true. Okay? First of all, nothing is forever. And so if you start with “nothing is forever,” and then you look at a medium of publishing and communications as ephemeral and fragile as the internet, why would we possibly think that would be forever? Now, some things on the internet, a lot of things on the internet, have been around for a long time. That’s good. But a lot of the internet is gone, and these days, more and more of what people are sharing online is designed to not be around very long.
The Internet is a transmission medium. The content shouldn’t last forever, that’s the wrong use of the medium. Books are much better offline information storage, if longevity is your goal.
When I think back to the stories and posts I’ve published online over the years, do I really think others who aren’t in the group and time they were for really want to go back and read those? Would my middle school GeoCities sites really be benefiting anyone? Imo the recent pipeline of fanfic and YouTube creators moving into traditional media is a good thing, and is more likely to preserve (some of) the good stuff in a way that AO3 or YT alone won’t.
I think the thing we’ve lost more recently is medium-term information retention, mostly as forums die(d), but I think that’s a very solvable problem.
I never had a very functional medium- or long-term memory due to adhd, so for me the internet is more like a useful augment for my dysfunctional memory. I honestly don’t know how I would function in society without it. So I guess there is some element of utility beyond it being simply a transmission medium.
And for many marginalized groups like lgbtq2s+ folks, the internet was super important for community building and finding like-minded souls, because they were/are relatively scarce in the “real world” of (at least my own) personal, real-life experiences. And that was very much about interactive communication and forums etc, so not “transmissive” as per your observation.
I think conceiving of the internet as a medium for “publication” is only one possible lens. It’s also a medium for communication. It’s a political medium (e.g. using the internet to bypass capitalist/authoritarian systems. And it’s also a medium for genuine friendships and positive psycho-social relationships for folks who’s IRL situations are sometimes dire, for whatever reason.
Having said all that, I 100% agree with you that it needn’t be a permanent record. There’s that saying that everyone has a book in them, but for most people, that’s where it should stay. Same goes for internet content.
Sorry, I think I wasn’t being entirely clear in my meaning:
The Internet is actually just sets of data transmission protocols. The servers that the Internet connects to each other are where actual content lives, but who they are owned by, and their content retention policies and choices, are completely opaque and variable. That’s why relying on websites for long-term storage is a bad idea. YouTube can (and has) deleted entire decades worth of content with no justification or recourse.
Communication is very different than data storage, and data transmission, which is what the Internet is at its core, is essentially synonymous with the former. It excels at facilitating communication.
But storage of data for any period? Unless you know the owners of the site, its financials, its data retention policies, etc, you don’t really have any guarantees that the thing you posted yesterday will be there tomorrow.
And I don’t think that’s bad, I think it’s just the nature of the Internet.
