Wikimania 2011 - Wiki Academy 2011 - Copyright and Intellectual Property (English)

Below is the short description.
Ниже есть продолжение.

00:08 - Opening - Prof. Niva Elkin-Koren, Haifa University

12:40 - Freedom of panorama and Wikimedia Commons
Christopher Cooper
Many people have difficulty understanding that a picture of a
building or of a statue in a street could be copyrighted, but
the Berne Convention makes this so. Following the deletion of
hundreds of potentially e ducational images, some contributors
are asking if the line between meeting strict copyright standards
and the ambitions of Commons is well placed.
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Freedom_of_panorama_and_Wikimedia_Commons
Download slides


30:35 - Cultural Fair Use, Political Narrative and Copyright
Jonathan Klinger
What is the connection between copyright, cultural rights and
fair use? In a brief lecture, we shall discuss the correlation in
regards to the relevant Israeli legislation and struggle for fair use.
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Cultural_Fair_Use,_Political_Narrative_and_Copyright.

46:15 - Fighting the Intellectual Property Regime
Nikolas Becker
The idea of intellectual property is not natural. It was
constructed in the 14th Century and has developed since then
into a worldwide accepted idea. A small group of Western
companies managed to spread this construction over the whole
world and build the regime of intellectual property. How could
countries of the Global South resist the much more powerful
western countries and make changes to the TRIPS agreement
during the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1994?
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Fighting_The_Intellectual_Property_Regime
Download slides


1:09:45 - Wikimedia and the Public Domain
Ryan Kaldari
Wikimedia is one of the largest repositories (and users) of
public domain material in the world. Commons alone hosts
over 3 million public domain files. Increasingly, however, the
public domain is coming under threat from a variety of sources:
governments restoring copyrights on public domain material,
media companies pushing for longer and longer copyright terms,
museums and archives acting as gatekeepers to the works
they house, DMCA abuse, etc. As one of the most prominent
projects in the Free Culture movement, how do we address
these problems and work to protect the public domain for the
long term?
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_and_the_Public_Domain

1:18:50 - A panel headed by Prof. Niva Elkin-Koren, Haifa University

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_xAX09jIR0

UPDATE 18-12-2011:
See also:

List: Wikimania 2011 copyright
List: Wiki Academy
Scheduled Lectured with link to youtube
Youtube list: Wikimania 2011
List: Wikimania 2011 posts

END OF UPDATE

28c3: The copyright war was just the beginning (English)

По наводке блога Давыдова.
Форматирование не сохранено.

The coming war on general computation

The copyright war was just the beginning

The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

There is more below, including links to another videos.
Ниже есть продолжение.

The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to "secure" anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.

And general purpose computers can cause harm -- whether it's printing out AR15 components, causing mid-air collisions, or snarling traffic. So the number of parties with legitimate grievances against computers are going to continue to multiply, as will the cries to regulate PCs.

The primary regulatory impulse is to use combinations of code-signing and other "trust" mechanisms to create computers that run programs that users can't inspect or terminate, that run without users' consent or knowledge, and that run even when users don't want them to.

The upshot: a world of ubiquitous malware, where everything we do to make things better only makes it worse, where the tools of liberation become tools of oppression.

Our duty and challenge is to devise systems for mitigating the harm of general purpose computing without recourse to spyware, first to keep ourselves safe, and second to keep computers safe from the regulatory impulse.

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/Fahrplan/events/4848.en.html

See also:
Wikimania 2011 - Wiki Academy 2011 - Copyright. Cultural Fair Use, Political Narrative
Wikimania 2011 - Wiki Academy 2011 - Copyright. Fighting the Intellectual Property Regime
Wikimania 2011 - Wiki Academy 2011 - Copyright. Wikimedia and the Public Domain

Wikimania 2011 - Wiki Academy 2011 - Copyright. Cultural Fair Use, Political Narrative (English)

Below is the short description.
Ниже есть продолжение.

30:35 - Cultural Fair Use, Political Narrative and Copyright
Jonathan Klinger
What is the connection between copyright, cultural rights and
fair use? In a brief lecture, we shall discuss the correlation in
regards to the relevant Israeli legislation and struggle for fair use.
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Cultural_Fair_Use,_Political_Narrative_and_Copyright.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_xAX09jIR0

UPDATE 18-12-2011:
See also:

List: Wikimania 2011 copyright
List: Wiki Academy
Scheduled Lectured with link to youtube
Youtube list: Wikimania 2011
List: Wikimania 2011 posts

END OF UPDATE

Clay Shirky: Why SOPA is a bad idea (English)

По наводке блога Давыдова.



http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html

Below there is interactive transcript.
Ниже есть продолжение.

I'm going to start here. This is a hand-lettered sign that appeared in a mom and pop bakery in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn a few years ago. The store owned one of those machines that can print on plates of sugar. And kids could bring in drawings and have the store print a sugar plate for the top of their birthday cake.

But unfortunately, one of the things kids liked to draw was cartoon characters. They liked to draw the Little Mermaid, they'd like to draw a smurf, they'd like to draw Micky Mouse. But it turns out to be illegal to print a child's drawing of Micky Mouse onto a plate of sugar. And it's a copyright violation. And policing copyright violations for children's birthday cakes was such a hassle that the College Bakery said, "You know what, we're getting out of that business. If you're an amateur, you don't have access to our machine anymore. If you want a printed sugar birthday cake, you have to use one of our prefab images -- only for professionals."

So there's two bills in Congress right now. One is called SOPA, the other is called PIPA. SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act. It's from the Senate. PIPA is short for PROTECTIP, which is itself short for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property -- because the congressional aides who name these things have a lot of time on their hands. And what SOPA and PIPA want to do is they want to do this. They want to raise the cost of copyright compliance to the point where people simply get out of the business of offering it as a capability to amateurs.

Now the way they propose to do this is to identify sites that are substantially infringing on copyright -- although how those sites are identified is never fully specified in the bills -- and then they want to remove them from the domain name system. They want to take them out of the domain name system. Now the domain name system is the thing that turns human-readable names, like Google.com, into the kinds of addresses machines expect -- 74.125.226.212.

Now the problem with this model of censorship, of identifying a site and then trying to remove it from the domain name system, is that it won't work. And you'd think that would be a pretty big problem for a law, but Congress seems not to have let that bother them too much. Now the reason it won't work is that you can still type 74.125.226.212 into the browser or you can make it a clickable link and you'll still go to Google. So the policing layer around the problem becomes the real threat of the act.

Now to understand how Congress came to write a bill that won't accomplish its stated goals, but will produce a lot of pernicious side effects, you have to understand a little bit about the back story. And the back story is this: SOPA and PIPA, as legislation, were drafted largely by media companies that were founded in the 20th century. The 20th century was a great time to be a media company, because the thing you really had on your side was scarcity. If you were making a TV show, it didn't have to be better than all other TV shows ever made; it only had to be better than the two other shows that were on at the same time -- which is a very low threshold of competitive difficulty. Which meant that if you fielded average content, you got a third of the U.S. public for free -- tens of millions of users for simply doing something that wasn't too terrible. This is like having a license to print money and a barrel of free ink.

But technology moved on, as technology is want to do. And slowly, slowly, at the end of the 20th century, that scarcity started to get eroded -- and I don't mean by digital technology; I mean by analog technology. Cassette tapes, video cassette recorders, even the humble Xerox machine created new opportunities for us to behave in ways that astonished the media business. Because it turned out we're not really couch potatoes. We don't really like to only consume. We do like to consume, but every time one of these new tools came along, it turned out we also like to produce and we like to share. And this freaked the media businesses out -- it freaked them out every time. Jack Valenti, who was the head lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America, once likened the ferocious video cassette recorder to Jack the Ripper and poor, helpless Hollywood to a woman at home alone. That was the level of rhetoric.

And so the media industries begged, insisted, demanded that Congress do something. And Congress did something. By the early 90s, Congress passed the law that changed everything. And that law was called the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. What the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 said was, look, if people are taping stuff off the radio and then making mixtapes for their friends, that is not a crime. That's okay. Taping and remixing and sharing with your friends is okay. If you make lots and lots of high quality copies and you sell them, that's not okay. But this taping business, fine, let it go. And they thought that they clarified the issue, because they'd set out a clear distinction between legal and illegal copying.

But that wasn't what the media businesses wanted. They had wanted Congress to outlaw copying full-stop. So when the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 was passed, the media businesses gave up on the idea of legal versus illegal distinctions for copying because it was clear that if Congress was acting in their framework, they might actually increase the rights of citizens to participate in our own media environment. So they went for plan B. It took them a while to formulate plan B.

Plan B appeared in its first full-blown form in 1998 -- something called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was a complicated piece of legislation, a lot of moving parts. But the main thrust of the DMCA was that it was legal to sell you uncopyable digital material -- except that there's no such things as uncopyable digital material. It would be, as Ed Felton once famously said, "Like handing out water that wasn't wet." Bits are copyable. That's what computers do. That is a side effect of their ordinary operation.

So in order to fake the ability to sell uncopyable bits, the DMCA also made it legal to force you to use systems that broke the copying function of your devices. Every DVD player and game player and television and computer you brought home -- no matter what you thought you were getting when you bought it -- could be broken by the content industries, if they wanted to set that as a condition of selling you the content. And to make sure you didn't realize, or didn't enact their capabilities as general purpose computing devices, they also made it illegal for you to try to reset the copyability of that content. The DMCA marks the moment when the media industries gave up on the legal system of distinguishing between legal and illegal copying and simply tried to prevent copying through technical means.

Now the DMCA had, and is continuing to have, a lot of complicated effects, but in this one domain, limiting sharing, it has mostly not worked. And the main reason it hasn't worked is the Internet has turned out to be far more popular and far more powerful than anyone imagined. The mixtape, the fanzine, that was nothing compared to what we're seeing now with the Internet. We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online. We share written things, we share images, we share audio, we share video. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we've made. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we've found. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we've made out of what we've found, and all of it horrifies those industries.

So PIPA and SOPA are round two. But where the DMCA was surgical -- we want to go down into your computer, we want to go down into your television set, down into your game machine, and prevent it from doing what they said it would do at the store -- PIPA and SOPA are nuclear and they're saying, we want to go anywhere in the world and censor content. Now the mechanism, as I said, for doing this, is you need to take out anybody pointing to those IP addresses. You need to take them out of search engines, you need to take them out of online directories, you need to take them out of user lists. And because the biggest producers of content on the Internet are not Google and Yahoo, they're us, we're the people getting policed. Because in the end, the real threat to the enactment of PIPA and SOPA is our ability to share things with one another.

So what PIPA and SOPA risk doing is taking a centuries-old legal concept, innocent until proven guilty, and reversing it -- guilty until proven innocent. You can't share until you show us that you're not sharing something we don't like. Suddenly, the burden of proof for legal versus illegal falls affirmatively on us and on the services that might be offering us any new capabilities. And if it costs even a dime to police a user, that will crush a service with a hundred million users.

So this is the Internet they have in mind. Imagine this sign everywhere -- except imagine it doesn't say College Bakery, imagine it says YouTube and Facebook and Twitter. Imagine it says TED, because the comments can't be policed at any acceptable cost. The real effects of SOPA and PIPA are going to be different than the proposed effects. The threat, in fact, is this inversion of the burden of proof, where we suddenly are all treated like thieves at every moment we're given the freedom to create, to produce or to share. And the people who provide those capabilities to us -- the YouTubes, the Facebooks, the Twitters and TEDs -- are in the business of having to police us, or being on the hook for contributory infringement.

There's two things you can do to help stop this -- a simple thing and a complicated thing, an easy thing and a hard thing. The simple thing, the easy thing, is this: if you're an American citizen, call your representative, call your senator. When you look at the people who co-signed on the SOPA bill, people who've co-signed on PIPA, what you see is that they have cumulatively received millions and millions of dollars from the traditional media industries. You don't have millions and millions of dollars, but you can call your representatives, and you can remind them that you vote, and you can ask not to be treated like a thief, and you can suggest that you would prefer that the Internet not be broken.

And if you're not an American citizen, you can contact American citizens that you know and encourage them to do the same. Because this seems like a national issue, but it is not. These industries will not be content with breaking our Internet. If they break it, they will break it for everybody. That's the easy thing. That's the simple thing.

The hard thing is this: get ready, because more is coming. SOPA is simply a reversion of COICA, which was purposed last year, which did not pass. And all of this goes back to the failure of the DMCA to disallow sharing as a technical means. And the DMCA goes back to the Audio Home Recording Act, which horrified those industries. Because the whole business of actually suggesting that someone is breaking the law and then gathering evidence and proving that, that turns out to be really inconvenient. "We'd prefer not to do that," says the content industries. And what they want is not to have to do that. They don't want legal distinctions between legal and illegal sharing. They just want the sharing to go away.

PIPA and SOPA are not oddities, they're not anomalies, they're not events. They're the next turn of this particular screw, which has been going on 20 years now. And if we defeat these, as I hope we do, more is coming. Because until we convince Congress that the way to deal with copyright violation is the way copyright violation was dealt with with Napster, with YouTube, which is to have a trial with all the presentation of evidence and the hashing out of facts and the assessment of remedies that goes on in democratic societies. That's the way to handle this.

In the meantime, the hard thing to do is to be ready. Because that's the real message of PIPA and SOPA. Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming -- not producing, not sharing -- and we should say, "No."

Thank you.

(Applause)

http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html

Google agrees to pay French news sites to send them traffic (English)

Немного сокращено. Форматирование моё.

French news sites have prevailed in negotiations with Google over "neighboring rights," a new legal right granted by the 2019 EU Copyright Directive. An agreement between Google and the French news industry "establishes a framework within which Google will negotiate individual licensing agreements" with individual news organizations, according to Google. Under these deals, French news articles will be featured in a new Google product called News Showcase.

This isn't the outcome Google wanted. For years, European news organizations have tried to force Google to pay them for the privilege of indexing their articles, and for years Google flatly refused to do so. When Spain passed legislation to force Google to pay to link to Spanish News organizations in 2014, Google responded by shutting down Google News in Spain.

Ниже есть продолжение.

Google tried to use that same playbook in France after the passage of the EU copyright directive. France was the first country to transpose the EU directive into its own laws. In 2019, Google announced it was going to stop displaying "snippets" from French news articles in search results. Google believed that showing only news story headlines, not brief excerpts from articles, would bring it into compliance with the new law.

But that move earned a rebuke from France's competition regulator, which held that the move was likely an abuse of Google's monopoly power. Google has around 90 percent of the French search market. The French Competition Authority held that the deal Google offered to news sites—let us index your site for free or we won't index it at all—was an abuse of that market power and contrary to the spirit of the new French law.

French authorities ordered Google to conduct "good faith negotiations" with the news industry to decide how much Google would pay news sites for their content. And they made clear that the number had better not be zero.

Those negotiations were apparently successful, though Google's announcement offers few details about the new framework.

"The remuneration that is included in these licensing agreements is based on criteria such as the publisher’s contribution to political and general information, the daily volume of publications, and its monthly internet traffic," according to the announcement.

The agreement is particularly significant because it offers a model for other European countries that want to force Google to fork over cash to their own news sites.

In the past, Google's hardball tactics deterred most European countries from trying to force Google to pay up. But with the passage of the EU copyright directive, European countries formed a united front against Google, making it much harder for Google to resist. Google's capitulation in France will weaken its bargaining position as other European countries pass their own versions of the French law and news organizations in other countries line up for their share of Google cash.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-agrees-to-pay-french-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic/

Copyright: The Surprising History (English)

Google Tech Talks
August 15, 2006

Karl Fogel

...Copyright is derived from a 16th-century English censorship law, later turned into a monopoly right to subsidize distribution. This history is somewhat at odds with the modern conception of copyright, and an understanding of it is increasingly important today, as the economics of distribution are changing radically...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI

Wikimania 2011 - Wiki Academy 2011 - Copyright. Wikimedia and the Public Domain (English)

Below is the short description.
Ниже есть продолжение.

1:09:45 - Wikimedia and the Public Domain
Ryan Kaldari
Wikimedia is one of the largest repositories (and users) of
public domain material in the world. Commons alone hosts
over 3 million public domain files. Increasingly, however, the
public domain is coming under threat from a variety of sources:
governments restoring copyrights on public domain material,
media companies pushing for longer and longer copyright terms,
museums and archives acting as gatekeepers to the works
they house, DMCA abuse, etc. As one of the most prominent
projects in the Free Culture movement, how do we address
these problems and work to protect the public domain for the
long term?
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_and_the_Public_Domain

1:18:50 - A panel headed by Prof. Niva Elkin-Koren, Haifa University

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_xAX09jIR0

UPDATE 18-12-2011:
See also:

List: Wikimania 2011 copyright
List: Wiki Academy
Scheduled Lectured with link to youtube
Youtube list: Wikimania 2011
List: Wikimania 2011 posts

END OF UPDATE

Wikimania 2011 - Wiki Academy 2011 - Copyright. Fighting the Intellectual Property Regime (English)

Below is the short description.
Ниже есть продолжение.

46:15 - Fighting the Intellectual Property Regime
Nikolas Becker
The idea of intellectual property is not natural. It was
constructed in the 14th Century and has developed since then
into a worldwide accepted idea. A small group of Western
companies managed to spread this construction over the whole
world and build the regime of intellectual property. How could
countries of the Global South resist the much more powerful
western countries and make changes to the TRIPS agreement
during the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1994?
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Fighting_The_Intellectual_Property_Regime
Download slides

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_xAX09jIR0

UPDATE 18-12-2011:
See also:

List: Wikimania 2011 copyright
List: Wiki Academy
Scheduled Lectured with link to youtube
Youtube list: Wikimania 2011
List: Wikimania 2011 posts

END OF UPDATE

Copyright: Steal this film 2.5 (English)

По наводке блога Давыдова.



See also:

Building Systems of Mutual Aid Prof. Yochai Benkler is also staring in the film above.
Another posts on copyright issues

Wikimania 2011 - Copyright - May it please the court (English)

58:30 Kat Walsh
Wikipedia has been cited by lawyers and courts in several places
for a variety of purposes: sometimes as support for information
regarded as "general knowledge", but sometimes in places where
a more authoritative source should have been used instead.
There are literally thousands of citations to Wikipedia in court
documents; this presentation is intended to discuss the ones which
have made the most impact and raise the most interesting issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c7N6XhK9Dc
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Grey_Revolution:_Motivating_Older_Persons_to_Participate_in_Wikipedia

UPDATE 18-12-2011:
See also:
List: Wikimania 2011 copyright
Scheduled Lectured with link to youtube
Youtube list: Wikimania 2011
List: Wikimania 2011 posts

END OF UPDATE

Copyright: Everything Is A Remix. Part 4 (English)

По наводке блога Давыдова.



http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

See also:
Another posts on copyright issues

Kissing Hank's Ass (English)

Из архива

Kissing Hank's Ass

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

John:
"Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."
Mary:
Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."
Me:
"Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would
I want to kiss His ass?"

There is more below.
Ниже есть продолжение.

John:
"If you kiss Hank's ass, He'll give you a million dollars; and if
you don't, He'll kick the shit out of you."
Me:
"What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"
John:
"Hank is a billionaire philanthropists. Hank built this town. Hank
owns this town. He can do whatever he wants, and what He wants is
to give you a million dollars, but He can't until you kiss his
ass."
Me:
"That doesn't make any sense. Why..."
Mary:
"Who are you to question Hank's gift? Don't you want a million
dollars? Isn't it worth a little kiss on the ass?"
Me:
"Well maybe, if it's legit, but..."
John:
"Then come kiss Hank's ass with us."
Me:
"Do you kiss Hank's ass often?"
Mary:
"Oh yes, all the time..."
Me:
"And has He given you a million dollars?"
John:
"Well no. You don't actually get the money until you leave town."
Me:
"So why don't you just leave town now?"
Mary:
"You can't leave until Hank tells you to, or you don't get the
money, and He kicks the shit out of you."
Me:
"Do you know anyone who kissed Hank's ass, left town, and got the
million dollars?"
John:
"My mother kissed Hank's ass for years. She left town last year,
and I'm sure she got the money."
Me:
"Haven't you talked to her since then?"
John:
"Of course not, Hank doesn't allow it."
Me:
"So what makes you think He'll actually give you the money if
you've never talked to anyone who got the money?"
Mary:
"Well, he gives you a little bit before you leave. Maybe you'll get
a raise, maybe you'll win a small lotto, maybe you'll just find a
twenty-dollar bill on the street."
Me:
"What's that got to do with Hank?"
John:
"Hank has certain 'connections.'"
Me:
"I'm sorry, but this sounds like some sort of bizarre con game."
John:
"But it's a million dollars, can you really take the chance? And
remember, if you don't kiss Hank's ass He'll kick the shit of you."
Me:
"Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to Him, get the details straight
from him..."
Mary:
"No one sees Hank, no one talks to Hank."
Me:
"Then how do you kiss His ass?"
John:
"Sometimes we just blow Him a kiss, and think of His ass. Other
times we kiss Karl's ass, and he passes it on."
Me:
"Who's Karl?"
Mary:
"A friend of ours. He's the one who taught us all about kissing
Hank's ass. All we had to do was take him out to dinner a few
times."
Me:
"And you just took his word for it when he said there was a Hank,
that Hank wanted you to kiss His ass, and that Hank would reward
you?"
John:
"Oh no! Karl has a letter he got from Hank years ago explaining the
whole thing. Here's a copy; see for yourself."



From the desk of Karl

1. Kiss Hank's ass and He'll give you a million dollars
when you leave town.
2. Use alcohol in moderation.
3. Kick the shit out of people who aren't like you.
4. Eat right.
5. Hank dictated this list Himself.
6. The moon is made of green cheese.
7. Everything Hank says is right.
8. Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.
9. Don't use alcohol.
10. Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.
11. Kiss Hank's ass or He'll kick the shit out of you.



Me: "This appears to be written on Karl's letterhead."
Mary:
"Hank didn't have any paper."
Me:
"I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's
handwriting."
John:
"Of course, Hank dictated it."
Me:
"I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"
Mary:
"Not now, but years ago He would talk to some people."
Me:
"I thought you said He was a philanthropist. What sort of
philanthropist kicks the shit out of people just because they're
different?"
Mary:
"It's what Hank wants, and Hank's always right."
Me:
"How do you figure that?"
Mary:
"Item 7 says 'Everything Hank says is right.' That's good enough
for me!"
Me:
"Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."
John:
"No way! Item 5 says 'Hank dictated this list himself.' Besides,
item 2 says 'Use alcohol in moderation,' Item 4 says 'Eat right,'
and item 8 says 'Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.'
Everyone knows those things are right, so the rest must be true,
too."
Me:
"But 9 says 'Don't use alcohol.' which doesn't quite go with item
2, and 6 says 'The moon is made of green cheese,' which is just
plain wrong."
John:
"There's no contradiction between 9 and 2, 9 just clarifies 2. As
far as 6 goes, you've never been to the moon, so you can't say for
sure."
Me:
"Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon is made of
rock..."
Mary:
"But they don't know if the rock came from the Earth, or from out
of space, so it could just as easily be green cheese."
Me:
"I'm not really an expert, but I think the theory that the Moon was
somehow 'captured' by the Earth has been discounted*. Besides, not
knowing where the rock came from doesn't make it cheese."
John:
"Ha! You just admitted that scientists make mistakes, but we know
Hank is always right!"
Me:
"We do?"
Mary:
"Of course we do, Item 5 says so."
Me:
"You're saying Hank's always right because the list says so, the
list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank
dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no
different than saying 'Hank's right because He says He's right.'"
John:
"Now you're getting it! It's so rewarding to see someone come
around to Hank's way of thinking."
Me:
"But...oh, never mind. What's the deal with wieners?"
Mary:
She blushes.
John:
"Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It's Hank's way. Anything else is
wrong."
Me:
"What if I don't have a bun?"
John:
"No bun, no wiener. A wiener without a bun is wrong."
Me:
"No relish? No Mustard?"
Mary:
She looks positively stricken.
John:
He's shouting. "There's no need for such language! Condiments of
any kind are wrong!"
Me:
"So a big pile of sauerkraut with some wieners chopped up in it
would be out of the question?"
Mary:
Sticks her fingers in her ears."I am not listening to this. La la
la, la la, la la la."
John:
"That's disgusting. Only some sort of evil deviant would eat
that..."
Me:
"It's good! I eat it all the time."
Mary:
She faints.
John:
He catches Mary. "Well, if I'd known you where one of those I
wouldn't have wasted my time. When Hank kicks the shit out of you
I'll be there, counting my money and laughing. I'll kiss Hank's ass
for you, you bunless cut-wienered kraut-eater."
With this, John dragged Mary to their waiting car, and sped off.


* Older versions say "I'm not really an expert, but I think the theory
that the Moon came from the Earth has been discounted. Besides, not
knowing where the rock came from doesn't make it cheese." Several people
have written to say that the current theory is that the Moon did indeed
come from the Earth. I've finally gotten around to making the change.


Hankisms, by John Cooper (off site)

Besando el Culo de Jorge (off site)


This page is part of Jhuger - http://www.sonic.net/jhuger. Copyright (c) 1996-1999 Rev. Jim Huber, All rights reserved. Permission granted to duplicate for personal use. For other uses, see http://www.sonic.net/jhuger/copyright.htm, email jhuger@sonic.net, or write Rev. Jim Huber | P.O. Box 236 | Rio Nido, Ca. 95471 | U.S.A.

http://www.sonic.net/~jhuger/kisshank.htm

Dangerous Knowledge - Аксиома выбора. Часть V (Russian)

Dailymotion. Видео. Часть I
Dailymotion. Видео. Часть II
Dailymotion. Видео. Часть III
Dailymotion. Видео. Часть IV
Dailymotion. Видео. Часть V

Этот пост я должен был довести до ума давно. Все части:
Dangerous Knowledge
Dangerous Knowledge - Бесконечное множество и интуиция.Часть I
Dangerous Knowledge - Парадокс брадобрея. Часть II
Dangerous Knowledge - Диагональный метод доказательства Кантора. Часть III
Dangerous Knowledge - Континуум-гипотеза. Часть IV
Dangerous Knowledge - Аксиома выбора. Часть V
Dangerous Knowledge - Теория меры. Часть VI
Dangerous Knowledge - Тест Тьюринга. Часть VII


Прикоснуться к бесконечности


Прошло около полутора лет со дня публикации последней части. К сожалению за это время ссылка на ролик была удалена из-за проблем с copyright-ом... Поэтому даю новую ссылку.

Как я уже говорил, есть некоторые вещи, которые явно не раскрыты в этой доке. Здесь, я кратко расскажу об аксиоме выбора.

Аксиома выбора утверждает:

Для каждого семейства A непустых непересекающихся множеств существует множество B, имеющее один и только один общий элемент с каждым из множеств X, принадлежащих A.

Ниже есть продолжение.


Пример 1. Пусть $X=\{1,2\}, Y=\{3,4\}, Z=\{5,6\}$. $A=X \cup Y \cup Z$. Очевидно, что множества X, Y, Z непустые, также легко видеть что они непересекающиеся. Аксиома выбора утверждает, что существует некоторое множество B, такое что $B \cap X = \{x\}$, $B \cap Y = \{y\}$, $B \cap Z = \{z\}$ и $x \neq y \neq z$ при чём $x \in X$, $y \in Y$, $z \in Z$. К примеру, множество $B=\{2,3,5\}$ удовлетворяет всем требованием.

Для конечного набора X аксиома выбора следует из других аксиом теории множеств. В этом случае это то же самое, что говорить, если мы имеем конечное число, скажем n>=1, коробок, каждая из которых содержит в себе вещи, тогда мы можем выбрать ровно одну вещь из каждой коробки. Ясно, что мы можем сделать это: мы начнём с первой коробки, выберем вещь; отправимся ко второй коробке, выберем вещь; и т.д. Так как есть конечное число коробок, то действуя нашей процедурой выбора, мы придём к концу. Результатом будет функция явного выбора: функция, которая первой коробке сопоставляет первый элемент, который мы выбрали, второй коробке — второй элемент и т. д. (Для получения формального доказательства для всех конечных множеств следует воспользоваться принципом математической индукции.)

Определение. Функция выбора — функция на множестве множеств X такая, что для каждого множества s в X, f(s) является элементом из s (f "выбирает" элемент из s).

С использованием понятия функции выбора аксиома утверждает:

Для любого семейства непустых множеств X существует функция выбора f, определённая на X.



Пример 2. Пусть элементы X — множества натуральных чисел. Каждый непустой
набор натуральных чисел имеет наименьший элемент, таким образом, определяя нашу функцию выбора, мы можем просто сказать, что каждому множеству сопоставляется наименьший элемент набора. Это позволяет нам сделать выбор элемента из каждого множества, поэтому мы можем записать явное выражение, которое говорит нам, какое значение наша функция выбора принимает. Если возможно таким образом определить функцию выбора, в аксиоме выбора нет необходимости.

То же определение можно сформулировать более сжато:

Каждое множество непустых множеств имеет функцию выбора.

Отсюда немедленно следует компактная формулировка отрицания аксиомы выбора:

Существует множество непустых множеств, которое не имеет никакой функции выбора.

До конца XIX века аксиома выбора использовалась безоговорочно. Например, после определения непустого множества X математик мог сказать: "Пусть F(s) будет определено для каждого s из X". В общем, невозможно доказать, что F существует без аксиомы выбора, но это, кажется, оставалось без внимания до Цермело.

Как было показано выше если X конечно, это функция выбора существует и без аксиомы выбора. Пример 2 показывает, что не всегда эта аксиома требуется и для бесконечных множеств.

Однако, сложности появляются в случае, если невозможно осуществить естественный выбор элементов из каждого множества. Если мы не можем сделать явный выбор, то почему уверены, что такой выбор можно совершить в принципе? Например, пусть X — это множество непустых подмножеств действительных чисел. Во-первых, мы могли бы попробовать поступить как в случае, если бы X было конечным. Если мы попробуем выбрать элемент из каждого множества, тогда, так как X бесконечно, наша процедура выбора никогда не придёт к концу, и вследствие этого мы никогда не получим функции выбора для всего X. Так что это не срабатывает. Далее, мы можем попробовать определить наименьший элемент из каждого множества. Но некоторые подмножества действительных чисел не содержат наименьший элемент. Например, таким подмножеством является открытый интервал (0,1). Если x принадлежит (0,1), то x/2 также принадлежит ему, причем меньше, чем x. Итак, выбор наименьшего элемента тоже не работает.

Причина, которая позволяет выбрать нам наименьший элемент из подмножества натуральных чисел — это факт, что натуральные числа обладают свойством вполнеупорядоченности - каждое подмножество натуральных чисел имеет единственный наименьший элемент в силу естественной упорядоченности. Возможно, если бы мы были умнее, то могли бы сказать: "Возможно, если обычный порядок для действительных чисел не позволяет найти особое (наименьшее) число в каждом подмножестве, мы могли бы ввести другой порядок, который таки давал бы свойство вполнеупорядоченности. Тогда наша функция сможет выбрать наименьший элемент из каждого множества в силу нашего необычного упорядочивания". Проблема тогда возникает в этом построении вполнеупорядоченности, которая для своего решения требует наличия аксиомы выбора. Иными словами, каждое множество может быть вполне упорядочено тогда и только тогда, когда аксиома выбора справедлива.

Доказательства, требующие аксиомы выбора, всегда неконструктивны: даже если доказательство создаёт объект, невозможно сказать, что же именно это за объект. Следовательно, хоть аксиома выбора позволяет вполне упорядочить множество действительных чисел, это не даёт нам никакой наглядности и конструктивизма в целом. Сама причина, по которой наш вышеуказанный выбор вполне упорядочения действительных чисел был таким для каждого множества X, мы могли явно выбрать элемент из такого множества. Если мы не можем указать, что мы используем вполне упорядоченность, тогда наш выбор не вполне явный. Это одна из причин, почему некоторые математики не любят аксиому выбора.

Оказывается, что для бесконечных семейств аксиома выбора является утверждением теории множеств, независимым от остальных аксиом этой теории (её статус в определённом смысле "такой же" как и континуум-гипотезы, отличие в том, что континуум-гипотеза независима от системы аксиом Цермело — Френкеля с аксиомой выбора,
а аксиома выбора независима от системы аксиом Цермело — Френкеля).

Определения.

Линейным порядком на множестве A частично упорядоченное множеством A называется отношение $R\subseteq A\times A$, обладающее следующим свойствами:
* Полное: $\forall x,\;y\in A\;((x,\;y)\in R\lor(y,\;x)\in R)$.
* Антисимметричное: $\forall x,\;y\in A\;((x,\;y)\in R\wedge(y,\;x)\in R\to y=x)$.
* Транзитивное: $\forall x,\;y,\;z\in A\;((x,\;y)\in R\wedge(y,\;z)\in R\to(x,\;z)\in R)$.

Линейно упорядоченное множество или цепь ― частично упорядоченное множество (полное, антисимметричное, транзитивное отношение $R\subseteq A\times A$), в котором для любых двух элементов a и b имеет место $a\leqslant b$ или $b\leqslant a$. Верхней гранью называется такой элемент $u\in R$, что $\forall x\in R\;x\leqslant u$.

Полным порядком на множестве A называется такой линейный порядок, что каждое подмножество $X\subseteq A$ имеет наименьший элемент.

Максимальный элементом множества A является такой элемент $\exists m\in A\;\nexists x\in A\;x>m$.


Теорема Цермело (принцип вполне упорядочивания)
Любое множество может быть вполне упорядочено.

Принцип полного порядка (теорема Цермелло) заключается в том, что любое множество может быть вполне упорядочено, т.е. на любом множестве может быть введёно полное, антисимметричное, транзитивное отношение $R\subseteq A\times A$ в котором каждое подмножество $X\subseteq A$ имеет наименьший элемент.

Доказательства эквивалентности теорема Цермелло аксимоы выбора есть тут..

Пример 3. Множество натуральных чисел может быть вполне упорядоченно
обычным отношением «меньше или равно чем». С тем же отношением множество целых чисел не имеет наименьшего элемента. В этом случае мы можем собрать целые числа в последовательность $(0,\;-1,\;1,\;-2,\;2,\;\ldots,\;-n,\;n,\;\ldots)$ и сказать, что младшие члены меньше, чем старшие. Очевидно, такое отношение будет полным порядком на целых числах.

Пример 4. Действительные числа, формирующие несчётное множество, могут быть вполне упорядочены. Это следует из теоремы Цермелло, при чём конструктивно представить такой порядок затруднительно.

Принцип максимума Хаусдорфа
В любом частично упорядоченном множестве существует максимальное линейно упорядоченное подмножество.


Лемма Цорна
Если в частично упорядоченном множестве любая цепь имеет верхнюю грань, то всё множество имеет хотя бы один максимальный элемент.

Лемма Цорна, наряду с теоремой Цермело (принцип вполнеупорядочивания) и принципом максимума Хаусдорфа (который, по сути, является альтернативной формулировкой леммы Цорна), является одним из утверждений, эквивалентных аксиоме выбора.

Во многих задачах лемма Цорна является наиболее удобной из всех формулировок, эквивалентных аксиоме выбора.

В качестве примера использования леммы Цорна можно рассмотреть доказательство существования базиса Гомеля в произвольном линейном пространстве.

Пусть $V$ — линейное пространство над полем $\mathfrak{R}$.

Свойство:
Базис есть максимальная (по включению) линейно независимая система векторов.
Замечания:
Вектор 0 не входит ни в одну в систему линейно независимой системе векторов.

Для доказательства существования рассмотрим два случая.

I. Линейное пространство V конечномерное, т.е. любая линейно независимая система состоит из $\leqslant n$ векторов. Применим принцип математической индукции.
Если n=1, то тогда $V=\mathfrak{R}$, а значит в качестве базиса Гомеля достаточно выбрать $B=\{\mathbf{1}\}$, а $1 \neq 0$, 1,0- единичные элемента поля $\mathfrak{R}$.

Допустим, что для всех линейный пространств с линейно независимой системой, состоящей из $\leqslant n$ векторов существует базис Гомеля, т.е. линейно независимая система $\{\mathbf{v_1},\;\ldots,\;\mathbf{v_n}\}$, в которой для всех $1<=i<=n v_i \neq 0$. Докажем, что базис Гомеля существует в линейном пространстве, состоящем из $\leqslant {n+1}$ линейно независимой системой векторов. Если у нас есть $\leqslant {n+1}$ линейно независимая система векторов, то значит у нас, в частности, есть и $\leqslant {n}$ линейно независимых векторов, таких что $\{\mathbf{v_1},\;\ldots,\;\mathbf{v_n}\}$, в которой для всех $1<=i<=n v_i \neq 0$. Это систему можно расширить путем добавления вектора $\mathbf{v_{n+1}} \neq 0$, таким что что система $\{\mathbf{v_1},\;\ldots,\;\mathbf{v_{n+1}}\}$ линейно независима. Тогда согласно принципу математической индукции утверждение доказано.

II. Линейное пространство V бесконечномерно.
Аналогично рассуждениям в пункте I мы можем построить цепь линейно независимых систем $B_1\subseteq B_2\subseteq\ldots$ следующим образом.

$B_1=\{\mathbf{v_1}\}$, состоящей из ненулевого вектора $\mathbf{v_1}\neq\mathbf{0}$. Далее, на каждом шаге мы присоединением вектор $\mathbf{v_{n+1}}$ к $B_n=\{\mathbf{v_1},\;\ldots,\;\mathbf{v_n}\}$, таким образом, что система $B_{n+1}=\{\mathbf{v_1},\;\ldots,\;\mathbf{v_n},\mathbf{v_{n+1}\}$ линейно независима (такой вектор существует, так как V бесконечномерно).

Получили $B_1\subseteq B_2\subseteq\ldots$ — цепь линейно независимых систем. Рассмотрим элемент $\bigcup B_k$. Легко доказать. что это объединение является также линейно независимой системой. Также, легко видеть, что для всех i $B_i$ меньше или равно (по включению), чем $\bigcup B_k$ (по построению объединения), т.е. $\bigcup B_k$ является верхней гранью по отношению к любой цепи частично упорядоченной через отношение включения. Тогда, согласно лемме Цорна, существует максимальный элемент, который и будет базисом Гомеля.

Что и требовалось доказать.

По сути в п. II мы воспользовались трансфинитной индукцией совместно с теоремой Цермело, а в п. I обычной математической индукцией, являющейся её частным (хотя и очень важным) случаем.

Трансфинитная индукция — метод доказательства, обобщающий математическую индукцию на случай несчётного числа значений параметра.

Трансфинитная индукция основана на следующем утверждении:

Пусть $M$ — вполне упорядоченное множество, $P(x)$ при $x\in M$ — некоторое утверждение. Пусть для любого $x\in M$ из того, что $P(y)$ истинно для всех $y<x$ следует, что верно $P(x)$. Тогда утверждение $P(x)$ верно для любого $x$.


Математическая индукция является частным случаем трансфинитной индукции. Действительно, пусть $M$ — множество натуральных чисел. Тогда утверждение трансфинитной индукции превращается в следующее: если для любого натурального $n$ из одновременной истинности утверждений $P(1)$, $P(2)$, $\ldots$, $P(n)$ следует истинность утверждения $P(n+1)$, то истинны все утверждения $P(n)$ для всех $n$. При этом база индукции, то есть $P(1)$, оказывается тривиальным частным случаем при $n=1$.

Во многих случаях трансфинитная индукция используется совместно с теоремой Цермело, утверждающей, что любое множество можно вполне упорядочить. Теорема Цермело эквивалентна аксиоме выбора, поэтому доказательство получается неконструктивным.

В заметке использованы метериалы Википедии.

Иосиф Бейн: Пророчество

Орфография не сохранена.

Арику Шарону

Вижу бегущих по спящему городу гончих,
В каждом стихе моем слышу ритмический сбой.
С Газы начнем, и газовой камерой кончим,
С Газы начнем, и кончим самими собой.

Молитва пополам с грехом,
Оборванная пулей фраза.
Сначала с Газой Ерихон,
А после - с Ерихоном Газа.

Ниже есть продолжение.

Сначала Газа, а потом,
После большого карнавала,
Похожий на войну погром,
Как прежде, некогда, бывало.

Сначала камушек в висок,
Торгаш на рынке фрукты режет,-
И окровавлен весь песок
На Тель-Авивском побережье.

Весь мир божественно красив,
Но дремлет лодка у причала.
Сначала новый Тель-Авив,
Или Кейсария сначала?

По всем автобусам огонь,
Ржавеет старой пушки дуло.
Пробита детская ладонь,
Сначала Лод, или Афула?

Любой из нас теперь мишень,
За рощей адская машина,
Мелькнула террориста тень,
Жизнь, на прощанье помаши нам.

Скорей прохожего убей,
Пусть каждый сдохнет, как собака,
Лишь потому, что он еврей,
Сначала Яффо, или Акко?

Над спящей детворою мгла,
И сабры спят, и полукровки.
Сначала нож из-за угла,
А после - взрыв на остановке.

Напрасен филантропов труд,
Проходят конвоиры мимо.
Потом и Хайфу отберут,
И Древний Храм Иерусалима.

Святые осквернят места
В какое-то чумное лето,
Во имя щедрого Христа,
Или скупого Магомета.

И снова смерть, и снова стон,
И тень знакомого спецназа.
Сначала с Хайфой Ерихон,
А после с Тель-Авивом Газа.

Назло империи Кремля,
Где только тюрьмы и параши,
Вся иудейская земля
Всегда была, и будет нашей.

И чудом будут спасены,
Во имя высшего закона,
И эти Родины сыны,
И эти дочери Сиона.

Приходит горе на порог,
Но веруют родные люди:
Всегда спасающий нас Бог
И в этот раз нас не забудет.

За окнами террор и тьма,
Опять грозят большой войною.
Стране достаточно героев -
Хватило б лидерам ума.

Своей стране свои дома
Мы строили, и будем строить.
Мы будем жить на hАр-Хома,
Наш Третий Храм не за горою.

И никогда не отдадим
Чумазым ордам Арафата,
Ни судьям их, ни адвокатам,
Прекрасней, чем Москва иль Рим,

Неразделим, неповторим,
Воспетый в Библии когда-то,
Наш золотой Иерусалим.
Витают ангелы над ним,

Над древним городом моим,
Лежит клеймо на лбу распятом...
Спаси евреев, Элоhим,
И все, что дорого и свято!


© Copyright: Иосиф Бейн, 2007
Свидетельство о публикации №107072701926

https://stihi.ru/2007/07/27-1926

Copyright: Everything Is A Remix. Part 3 (English)

По наводке блога Давыдова.



http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

Revolution OS (сокращённая версия)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1F_MfLRlX0 Перевод Дмитрия Бачило (полная версия)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw8K460vx1c Revolution OS (оригинал)

Free Software, Open Source, Copyright, Coplyleft
GNU, Linux, Windows, Microsoft
Nestscape, Mozilla, Firefox

A modern Day [Black] Gold Rush (English)

По наводке блога Давыдова
Сокращено. Форматирование сохранено.

In 2009, U.S. oil production began to climb after declining for 22 of the previous 23 years. The shale oil production of the Bakken formation, which straddles the Montana-North Dakota border and stretches into Canada, has been a significant contributor to this temporary uptick in oil production.

...While the Bakken boom offers a hopeful story in which American ingenuity and nature’s endless bounty emancipate us from energy oppression and dependence on evil and oppressive foreign dictators, musings of energy independence are premature, misguided and misleading. The problem with the Bakken story as told by Crooks and others is that it lacks historical context. Referring to recent developments as an energy revolution implies that there are no lessons to be learned from history. But as Mark Twain put it, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Lessons from the California Gold Rush

There is more below.
Ниже есть продолжение.

In 1848, John Marshall discovered gold while constructing John Sutter’s sawmill in Coloma, California. Sutter and Marshall attempted to keep the discovery secret, but savvy newspaper publisher and merchant, Samuel Brannan, soon learned the news. Brannan hurriedly set up a store to sell prospecting tools and provisions and began promoting the discovery in much the same way that the media has been promoting the Bakken. As the news of Marshall’s discovery spread, the California Gold Rush grew to international proportions.

Forty-niners rushed to The Golden State in search of riches, and California’s population exploded from 8,000 in 1848 to 93,000 in 1850, a quarter of a million in 1852, and 350,000 by 1860. With the majority of the influx of humanity employed in prospecting, precious few engaged in support activities. But with the rapid accumulation of mineral wealth, imports were easily acquired. Timber, for instance, was sourced from the Pacific Northwest, and the small town of Seattle, which was only settled in 1852, entered a sustained period of rapid exponential growth.

Despite the low productivity of the labor-intensive process of gold panning, annual production grew from just over 1,400 ounces in 1848 to more than 3.9 million ounces by 1852. To put this into perspective, prior to 1848, cumulative U.S. gold production amounted to just over 1 million ounces.

The rapid growth in output was driven not by the backbreaking extraction of gold dust so much as by the discovery of colossal gold nuggets, like the twin 25-pounders found in Downieville (1850) and on the banks of the Mokelumne River (1848). By comparison, one could spend decades panning and toiling over rockers and sluices manually sorting flakes of gold from stream sediments and never accumulate such an amount.

Of course nuggets are easier to find than flakes, and the great majority were discovered in the first few years. By 1852, only four years after gold was first discovered, California gold production began a rapid descent. Production declined 50% by 1862 and 80% by 1872.



Figure 4: California gold production showing peak in 1852 followed by rapid decline (Source: Western Mining History – westernmininghistory.com)

The decline was only barely checked by the adoption of ‘hydraulic mining’ – a process by which massive amounts of water under intense pressure is used to disintegrate entire hillsides. At the North Bloomfield mine, for example, 60 million gallons of water per day eroded more than 41 million cubic yards of debris between 1866 and 1884. (http://www.sierranevadavirtualmuseum.com/docs/galleries/history/mining/hydraulic.htm)

The runoff from ‘hydraulicking’, as it was called, was directed to sluice boxes where dense gold dust was separated from the other detritus. The displaced earth eventually came to rest in California’s fertile valleys in massive quantities. It has been estimated that hydraulicking generated eight times the amount of ‘slickens’ (tailings) than was removed during construction of the Panama Canal, which, by the way, employed the same process.

...
During California’s successive gold rushes more than ­­a few prospectors became rich, but the vast majority spent more cash purchasing claims and supplies than they earned from the gold dust they sold. The main beneficiaries were the businessmen who profited from the search for gold, rather than the discovery of gold; men like Samuel Brannan and Thomas Craig, the manufacturer of the ‘Monitor’ nozzles used in hydraulic mining.

Lessons from the Klondike Gold Rush
A half-century later, a similar story unfolded in the Yukon. In 1897, the nation was suffering through the Long Depression, which, ironically, was in large part the result of the decision to revert to the gold standard upon the conclusion of the Civil War. As ‘greenbacks’ – notes which were not explicitly backed by gold – were pulled from circulation in order to bring the number of dollars back to par with gold reserves, deflation set in. Deflation hit laborers and farmers the hardest and proved to be a significant force behind the populist call for bimetallism.



Figure 6: These two cartoons illustrate a debate that lingers to this day. On the left, greenbacks are produced to pay debts. On the right, a worker and a farmer struggle for existence as the reversion to the gold standard elevates their debts and devalues their services. (Sources: Left: no copyright; Right: Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park – a.k.a. The Gold Rush Museum, Seattle, WA)


As a result of the Long Depression, people were desperate for work, but even more desperate for a reason to maintain hope in the face of despair. Much as the Bakken has provided hope for contemporary society, the SS Portland provided hope when it arrived in Seattle in the summer of 1897 with a half a ton of Yukon gold on board. The conditions were primed for an outbreak of gold fever, and just as Samuel Brannan advertised the discovery of gold at Sutter’s mill, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer eagerly hyped the Klondike ‘prospects’ to not only sell newspapers but the entire town as the launch site for stampeders.



Figure 7: The newspaper that heralded the Klondike Gold Rush (Source: University of Washington digital archives)

The next day the Klondike gold rush commenced as the steamship Al-Ki departed with a full deck of stampeders and 350 tons of supplies, including foodstuffs, pack animals, prospecting equipment, and clothing, like C.C. Filson oiled canvas jackets and pants. These garments, which were impregnated with a mixture of paraffin wax and other oils, proved to be as waterproof as they were stiff – the stiffness resulting from the fact that the paraffins, which are solid at ‘normal’ temperatures, are nearly impenetrable under arctic conditions.

The Klondike Stampede caused demand for steamships to mushroom and Seattle quickly rose to become one of the nation’s preeminent ship building communities. And as the demand for steamships spiked, so too did demand for timber and coal, two of the Puget Sound’s most dominant industries. To this day, Alaska depends almost exclusively on the Puget Sound for the delivery of groceries, consumer goods, manufactures, and other commodities.

As was the case in California, Klondike gold discoveries fell just as quickly as they had climbed. Between 1896 and 1900, annual discoveries rose from $$$300,000 to more than $$$22 million, but by 1904 production had fallen to less than half the peak value, and by 1907 production had declined more than 80%. And just as the new and ecologically disruptive technology of hydraulic mining failed to arrest or reverse declining production in California, the introduction of hydraulic mining and large scale dredging failed to maintain the pace of discovery made by the first few waves of stampeders who employed far less technologically advanced and capital intensive processes.



Figure 10: Klondike gold production (Source: Data from J.P. Hutchins, January 4, 1908, “Klondike District”, The Engineering and Mining Journal)

After studying dredging operations in the Klondike, mining engineer J.P. Hutchins concluded, “The most satisfactory returns were from a dredge working an unfrozen area in the flood-plain of the Klondike River; this was installed before the large corporation, now so prominent in the Klondike, became interested. The dredges installed since that time have been very disappointing in returns. Three powerful dredges began operation on the lower Bonanza Creek, but the experience there has been most discouraging.” (J.P. Hutchins, January 4, 1908, “Klondike District”, Engineering and Mining Journal on January 4, 1908)

While dredging was not able to arrest declining production, the process certainly made an impression on the landscape. Tailings moraines provide a lasting visual testament to the efforts made by dredge operators, who quite literally left no stone unturned.



Figure 11: In order to dredge in the Yukon, steam had to be injected into the frozen earth. The thawed sand and gravel was then dredged to the bedrock, sorted in the floating dredge, and deposited into immense tailings that can be seen from space (Sources: Clockwise from top: http://www.flickr.com/photos/capncanuck/2972017631/; State of Alaska Guide (http://www.stateofalaskaguide.com/alaska-and-yukon.htm); Google Maps)

The similarity in California and Klondike gold production curves was not lost on Mr. Hutchins who further wrote, “[Klondike] figures reveal a marked similarity between this and other placer districts not only in respect to the rapid increase of the annual output to a maximum a few years after the discovery of the placers, but also in the rapid decrease in the output after the maximum figure had been reached. It is of passing interest to note that in both California and Klondike, the annual production reached a maximum the fourth year after discovery. These figures were more than $$$80,000,000 for California and more than $$$22,000,000 for Klondike.”

As historian Pierre Burton put it, “The statistics regarding the Klondike stampede are diminishing ones. One hundred thousand persons, it is estimated, actually set out on the trail; some thirty or forty thousand reached Dawson. Only about one half of this number bothered to look for gold, and of these only four thousand found any. Of the four thousand, a few hundred found gold in quantities large enough to call themselves rich. And out of these fortunate men only the merest handful managed to keep their wealth. The Kings of Eldorado toppled from their thrones one by one.”

While gold production continues to this day, the Klondike gold rush ended in the summer of 1899, when over the course of a single week, more than 20,000 ‘sourdoughs’ left the Yukon on news that gold had been discovered on the beaches of Nome, Alaska. The Nome gold rush, which was similarly short-lived, is widely cited as the last gold rush of importance, but only by those whose narrow definition excludes black gold.

The Rush for Black Gold on Alaska’s North Slope
In 1902, Alaska produced its first barrel of oil, and in 1953 the discovery of oil in a small town West of Fairbanks ushered in the modern era of oil production. In 1957 oil was discovered on the Kenai Peninsula, and in 1959, one hundred years after Colonel Drake produced the first barrel of oil in Pennsylvania, British Petroleum (BP) began prospecting for oil along Alaska’s expansive North Slope.

BP was soon joined by Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), who in 1968 discovered Prudhoe Bay, the oilfield equivalent of a 25-pound gold nugget. The Prudhoe Bay field is estimated to have had 25 billion barrels of crude before extraction commenced in 1977, making it the largest field in North America. Another major US field, Kuparuk with reserves of 6 billion barrels is also on the North Slope and was discovered in 1969 by Sinclair Oil.

In order to transport oil from the remote North Slope, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was proposed, but construction did not begin until 1974, after 515 federal permits and 832 state permits were approved. Construction was completed in 1977. At peak construction, in October 1975, 51,000 direct and contract employees were at work on various aspects of the 800-mile pipeline. With construction costs totaling roughly $8 billion, small fortunes were made long before the first barrel of North Slope oil was produced, and once again the Puget Sound economy benefitted as nearly all equipment and supplies were shipped through Washington’s seaports.

Production from the Prudhoe Bay field peaked in 1988, and production from the Kuparuk field peaked in 1992. With these two fields dominating North Slope production, the black gold flowing through the TAPS then fell into decline after only 11 years of operation.

Eleven years after the peak, North Slope production had declined to less than half the peak volume. To use Mr. Hutchins’s words, it is of passing interest to note that in California, the Klondike, and Alaska, production had declined to roughly half the maximum value within the same period of time it took to reach the peak. Today, production is only slightly more than 24% of the peak, and it continues to decline. Through June this year production was 35,000 barrels per day less than the average production rate in 2010.



Figure 13: Source: Oil and Gas Production Forecasting: Presentation to the Senate Finance Committee, February 16, 2010, Alaska Department of Revenue.

Without some type of North Slope game-changer, production will by decade’s end decline to the minimum TAPS operating capacity of 350,000 bpd. Currently, it is believed that a flurry of new projects including projects that are already under development and those that are under evaluation will significantly slow the rate of decline.

One such project is BP’s Liberty project, which is currently a couple of years behind schedule and delayed indefinitely. If or when the Liberty project comes online, North Slope production will be goosed by an estimated 40,000 bpd, which will essentially add one year to the operating life of the TAPS. There is a danger associated with making hasty generalizations from the performance of just one field, but if the technologically challenging Liberty project is indicative of challenges that will be encountered elsewhere, it stands to reason that other new projects may encounter similarly long delays. And if this is the case, production will decline more quickly than is currently being anticipated.

The problem of declining rates of North Slope production is compounded by the engineering specifications of the pipeline system. At lower flow rates, the length of time required for a barrel of oil to make the trip from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez lengthens. In 2008, the trip took 12.9 days, and the temperature of the crude, which entered the TAPS at 110 degrees Fahrenheit, fell to just over 55 degrees by the time it reached Valdez. Longer transport times subject the oil to low ambient temperatures for longer periods, and as the temperature of the crude in the pipeline falls, paraffins begin to precipitate at ever increasing rates. The paraffins, which were once used (and still are used) to waterproof Klondikers’ jackets, behave much like arterial plaque when they precipitate in pipelines.

Longer transit times also allow emulsified water to separate from the crude. As the water separates it collects in low spots where it greatly accelerates pipeline corrosion. Under the right/wrong circumstances the water can freeze, thereby constricting flow, or worse yet, breaking free and damaging pumps.

Additionally, the Low Flow Study Project Team hired by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company explains that, “Lower crude oil temperatures will permit soils surrounding the buried portions of the pipeline to freeze, which will create ice lenses in certain soil conditions. Ice lenses could cause differential movement of the pipe via frost heave mechanisms. Assuming no heating of the crude oil, ice lens formation is predicted to occur at a throughput of 350,000 BPD. Unacceptable pipe displacement limits and possible overstress conditions in the pipe would be reached at a flow volume of 300,000 BPD.”4

If the long-term rate of decline remains fixed at 35,000 bpd, and it makes financial sense to re-engineer the TAPS to handle lower volumes, only 239,000 bpd will be produced in 2020. If it does not make financial sense, and the decline is not significantly slowed by production from new fields, North Slope output will fall to zero. Under this worst case scenario, the annualized rate of decline would be roughly 70,000 barrels per day.

Consequently, in order for U.S. oil production to remain flat in the face of North Slope declines, which have persisted for 22 years despite the fact that no fewer than nine significant fields have been brought online over this period, production elsewhere in the U.S. needs to increase by 35,000 or 70,000 bpd. This will be a challenge because the oilfield equivalents of colossal gold nuggets have, by and large, already been discovered.

There are exceptions, of course. It was estimated that the 1 billion barrel Thunder Horse field in the Gulf of Mexico would produce at a maximum rate of 250,000 bpd. Unfortunately, production peaked within 10 months and then fell into rapid decline.

The Rush for Shale Oil
The Bakken formation is estimated by the USGS to have an impressive 4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in place. (3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—)While this is a significant amount, it should be pointed out that the Prudhoe Bay field was more than 6 times the Bakken’s size, and Kuparuk was 1.5 times larger. It also bears mentioning that the Bakken oil is trapped in two layers of impermeable shale and a layer of ‘tight’ sandstone. In order to extract oil from the middle sandstone layer, producers utilize the process of hydraulic fracturing pioneered by natural gas producers. The process of hydraulic fracturing should not be confused with hydraulic mining, though similarities abound.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracing, involves pumping millions of gallons of fracing fluid (a mixture of water, propants, and chemicals) per well into the earth under pressures great enough to fracture rock and release the oil. As a consequence of the process, flow rates from shale oil wells are low compared to the high flow rates of wells tapped into large conventional fields.

Whereas conventional wells like those in the Thunder Horse reservoir produce at a rate of 40,000 bpd, only 14 of the nearly 9,000 wells in the Bakken produce more than 800 barrels per day, and the average well produces only 52 bpd. Even at 800 barrels per day, 50 Bakken wells would need to be drilled for each Liberty/Thunder Horse size well, and nearly 800 of the average size Bakken wells would be required.

In order to arrest North Slope declines, 700 average size Bakken wells will need to be completed each and every year.

Due to the massive quantity of water required by the hydraulic fracturing process, the chemical cocktail that is added to the water to create fracing fluid, and the massive amount of dangerous wastewater generated by the process, environmental activists...oppose hydraulic fracturing...

...there is no escaping the fact that the Bakken wells are merely flakes of gold dust, and Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk are the oilfield equivalents of colossal nuggets. And history teaches us that replacing nuggets with dust is at best a stopgap measure. While gold production in California continues to this day, production will never climb to anywhere near the peak reached in 1852 despite the fact that gold now trades at $$$1,800 per ounce and extraction technologies have improved by leaps and bounds.

Within this historical context we can sift the Bakken hope from the hype. The good news is that Bakken output rose from 130,000 bpd in June 2003 to over half a million barrels per day today, and is well on its way to producing a 750,000 barrels per day of high quality shale oil. Of course an analogous statement could have been said of California gold production in 1853, Klondike gold production in 1899, and North Slope oil production in 1987, so the danger of extrapolating past trends into the future is clear. That said, the growth rate is impressive.



Figure 14: North Dakota oil production showing the effect of unconventional oil production from the Bakken formation (Sources: EIA and the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources)

Every silver lining has a cloud, and the bad news is that Montana production peaked in December 2006 and has already declined to 62% of the peak volume. This decline in Montana’s production indicate that what is commonly billed as a homogeneous geologic formation is in fact heterogeneous. The pattern of production suggests that the region of economically viable and productive wells is not ubiquitous, but rather concentrated in a few important areas. (Link for more on this topic)



Figure 15: North Dakota and Montana oil production – one formation, diverging trends (Sources: EIA and the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources)

The Bakken narrative being constructed by the likes of Yergin, Crooks, and Luce is hopeful, yet incomplete. Production from North Dakota is climbing rapidly, but production in Montana and, more importantly, Alaska’s North Slope is declining. When taken together, a picture resembling the shadow of truth emerges. The Bakken boom has simply hidden a much more troubling trend; it has nearly perfectly balanced out the decline in North Slope output.



Figure 16: Aggregate oil production from Alaska’s North Slope and the Bakken (Source: EIA and the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources)

Parting Thoughts
George Orwell wrote that, ”He who controls the present, controls the past, and he who controls the past, controls the future.” There is more than a nugget of truth in this statement. The future is guided by the stories which shape our imagination and our perception of what is possible, and therefore what is pursued...

The Bakken narrative being constructed by its proponents thrusts forth two main points. First, recent technological advances have opened the door to bountiful energy supply, so much so, that talk of energy independence has re-emerged. Second, alternative/renewable/clean energy requires subsidies that we (i.e. the U.S.) can’t afford, that the public doesn’t want, and that go against the free market ideology that Milton Fiedman chipped into the impenetrable stone walls that fortify the Chicago School. From these propositions it is concluded that shale oil and gas are not simply the best option for our non-negotiable way of life, they are the only option.

This narrative is enticing to many politicians and much of the public because it fits into a greater national narrative that holds at its core the primacy of market-led American ingenuity. When faced with a challenge, American entrepreneurs always emerge victorious, resource limits be damned! Or so the thinking goes.

A sober reading of history, however, suggests that the Bakken success story fits a well-established pattern in which every natural resource boom is followed by an inevitable decline.

Sometimes history provides us with lessons that we don’t want to learn. Gold dust can’t replace colossal nuggets, shale oil can’t replace giant conventional oil fields, and wishful thinking and ideological fortitude is no substitute for dispassionate analytical rigor.

http://mazamascience.com/EnergyTrends/?p=912

עושים היסטוריה 127 - להציל את פרוייקט דומסדיי - על שימור מידע דיגיטלי (Hebrew, English, 2013)

mp3 (Hebrew)
mp3 (English)

בשנת 1986 יזמה רשות השידור הבריטית, ה-BBC, פרוייקט שאפתני במיוחד: תיעוד גורף, בעזרת מאות אלפי מאמרים ותמונות, של החיים בבריטניה המודרנית. הפרוייקט הושלם בהצלחה- אך 15 מאוחר יותר עמד בפני מוות משונה ואכזרי במיוחד: הוא נשמר על דיסקים שאיש לא יכל עוד לקרוא…האם נוכל להציל את פרוייקט דומסדיי, ואת אינספור פיסות המידע שאנחנו מייצרים מדי שניה, מתהומות הנשייה?

In the 1980’s, the British BBC invested millions of pounds on what should have been a technological marvel: a modern version of the famous medieval Domesday Book. Less then 15 years later, it’s system was unusable. Compare that expensive failure to the longevity of the Domesday Book: a record written on paper in Latin in the 11th century and is still readable today. What can these two case studies tell us about the challenges and potential solutions to Digital Preservation?

http://www.ranlevi.com/2013/04/30/ep127_digital_preservation/
http://www.cmpod.net/digital-information-preservation/

Ниже есть продолжение.

DC היא חברת מחקר אמריקנית שמתמחה בתחום התקשורת וטכנולוגית מידע. בכל שנה עורכת IDC סקר מקיף ובו היא מנסה להעריך כמה מידע – ספרים, תמונות, קבצי קול, סרטים וכו'- הפיקו כל בני האדם יחד, עד כה. קשה לדעת עד כמה אמינים הנתונים המתקבלים ממחקר כה שאפתני, ו-IDC כבר ספגה ביקורת בעבר על מחקרים לא מדויקים – אבל לכל הפחות, מחקריה של IDC מספקים לנו הערכה גסה לגבי נפח המידע שמייצרת האנושות כל שנה.

למשל, בשנת 2005 העריכה IDC כי נפח סך כל המידע האנושי הוא 130 אקסה-בייט. 'בייט' (Byte) היא יחידת מידע דיגיטלית בסיסית, שוות ערך לאות בודדת. 'אקסה-בייט' הם עשר בחזקת שמונה עשר בתים. כמה גדול הוא אקסה-בייט? אם נניח, לשם הדוגמא,, שנפחו של פרק ממוצע של עושים היסטוריה הוא חמישים מגה בייט – אזי אקסה בייט אחד הוא עשרים ושלושה מיליון שנה של האזנה רצופה לתכנית…

ב-2012, שבע שנים מאוחר יותר, היה נפח המידע שברשות האנושות 2800 אקסה-בייט, או במילים אחרות – פי עשרים מנפח המידע ב-2005. המשמעות היא שסך כל נפח המידע האנושי יותר מאשר מכפיל את עצמו בכל שנה. בעידן המצלמות הדיגיטליות, עיבודד התמלילים הממוחשב ובלוג לכל גולש, קל יותר מאי פעם ליצור מידע חדש. ב-2020, מעריכים ב-IDC, נפח המידע יגיע ל-40 זטה-בייט,, או 40 אלף אקס-בייט.

הארכיאולוגים של ימינו נאלצים לעבוד קשה בחפירות, שחזורים ואיחוי שברים של כדי חימר כדי לנסות וליצור תמונה אמינה של איך נראו החיים בימי קדם: כמות המידע שזמינה עבורם היא זעומה. על פניו, שפע המידע שאנחנו מייצרים היום אמור להוות ברכה לארכיאולוגים ולהיסטוריונים של העתיד: לא צריכה להיות להם שום בעיה להבין מי היינו ומה חשבנו. אחרי הכל, אנחנו מתעדים את חיינו באינספור דרכים – מסרטים ועד בלוגים.

אבל שום דבר אינו פשוט כמו שהוא נראה. כפי שמייד ניווכח, שפע המידע הדיגיטלי שאנחנו מייצרים מביא עימו בעיות חדשות ומסובכות שיציבו בפני הארכיאולוגים אתגרים חדשים ואולי אף ישנו כליל את פניו של מקצוע הארכיאולוגיה.
ספר דומסדיי

בשנת 1066 ניצח הדוכס וויליאם מנורמנדי את המלך הרולד השני, והוכתר למלכה של אנגליה. להיות מלך, גילה וויליאם, זה לא עניין זול: צריך לשלם לחיילים, לבנות מבצרים ועוד הוצאות מעיקות שכאלה. מקור ההכנסה העיקרי של הממלכה היה, אז כמו היום, המיסים ששילמו האזרחים – אך בבלגן המלחמות והסכסוכים כבר לא היו אנשי האוצר בטוחים מי צריך לשלם כמה.

מכיוון ש'קו הצדק' עדיין לא היה זמין באותה העת, החליט וויליאם ב-1086 לצאת למבצע אדיר וחסר תקדים: באופן מפתיע, זה לא היה מבצע צבאי, אלא מבצע סטטיסטי. הוא שלח את נציגיו לתור את כל אנגליה לאורכה ולרוחבה, ולתעד באופן מדויק ככל האפשר מי בעליה של כל חלקת אדמה, כמה כסף יש לכל אזרח ובמה הוא עוסק למחייתו. כל הנתונים אוגדו לשני כרכים, אשר יחד זכו לכינוי "ספר דומסדיי" (Domesday), שם שלקוח מה- Doomsday הנוצרי (נשמע זהה, אך באיות אחר), הוא 'יום הדין'. ביום הדין, על פי המסורת, יישפט כל אדם על מעשיו הטובים והרעים, משפט שלא ניתן לערער עליו. באותו האופן, המידע שמופע אודותיך בספר דומסדיי קובע כמה כסף אתה חייב למלך, וגם עליו לא ניתן לערער.

ספר דומסדיי שרד עד ימינו. אם יש לכם קשרים בארכיון הלאומי הבריטי וידע מוצק בלטינית מדוברת, אתם יכולים לדפדף בו ולקרוא את תוכנו. עבור ההיסטוריונים, ספר דומסדיי הוא מתנה משמיים: אין מסמך היסטורי שמתאר באופן שלם ושיטתי כל כך רגע בחייה של מדינה שלמה.

פרוייקט דומסדיי

בשנת 1986 החליט שירות השידור הבריטי, ה-BBC, לציין 900 שנים לספר המיוחד הזה, ולצאת במבצע שאפתני משלו. "פרוייקט דומסדיי" של ה-BBC היה המקבילה המודרנית של ספר דומסדיי העתיק: ניסיון ללכוד באופן מקיף רגע בחייה של האומה הבריטית. מיליון איש, ברובם ילדי בית ספר מכל רחבי בריטניה, כתבו על חיי היומיום שלהם, על העיר בה הם חיים והקהילה לה הם שייכים. ב-BBC אספו כמאה וחמישים אלף דפי טקסט, עשרים אלף תמונות ומאות מפות, נתונים סטטיסטיים וסרטונים. את כל המידע הזה התכוונו ב-BBC לשמור באופן דיגיטלי על גבי מחשבים אישיים זולים יחסית, להנאתם והשכלתם של ילדי בית הספר.

אחרי סקירה מקיפה של האפשרויות הקיימות, בחרו ראשי הפרוייקט בטכנולוגיית אחסון חדשנית ומבטיחה בשם 'לייזר דיסק'. הם דחסו את המאמרים, המפות והסרטונים לתוך שני דיסקים: הראשון כונה 'דיסק הקהילה' והכיל בעיקר את המאמרים והתמונות שתרמו האזרחים מרחבי בריטניה, והשני היה 'הדיסק הלאומי' שהכיל מידע מקצועי ו'ממוסד' יותר כגון תמונות מקצועיות, גרפים וטבלאות סטטיסטיות, סרטונים ועוד. אחת ממטרות הפרוייקט הייתה לאפשר למשתמשים גישה נוחה וקלה למידע שעל הדיסקים, ולצורך העניין פותחה תוכנה מיוחדת שבאמצעותה ניתן היה לאתר מאמר או תמונה מסוימת לפי מילות חיפוש, תפריט, מיקום על מפה ועוד. מכיוון שהמחשבים האישיים היו אז רק בחיתוליהם, ב-BBC פיתחו נגן לייזר דיסק ייעודי שהיה מסוגל לקרוא את שני הדיסקים ולהציג את תוכנם על גבי מסך טלוויזיה רגיל.

הפרוייקט השאפתני הסתיים בזמן ועמד במסגרת התקציב שהקוצתה לו, אך לרוע המזל לא זכה לפופולאריות רבה. הערכה שהכילה את נגן הלייזר ושני הדיסקים נמכרה בכ-5000 פאונד, סכום גבוה שמעט מאד בתי ספר וארגונים ציבוריים היו יכולים להרשות אותו לעצמם. כתוצאה מכך, עותקים ספורים בלבד של פרויקט דומסדיי הופצו בקרב הציבור, והמזם לא הצליח להחזיר את ההשקעה בו. אף על פי כן, כל מי שהיה מעורב בו היה גאה לקחת בו חלק: בסופו של דבר מדובר במעין 'קפסולת זמן' איכותית ומושקעת, שללא ספק תהיה חשובה ומועילה להיסטוריונים של העתיד כפי שספר דומסדיי, זה העשוי נייר, מועיל להיסטוריונים של ימינו.

אך כתבה שהתפרסמה בעיתון הבריטי The Observer בשנת 2002 חשפה מציאות שונה ועגומה: חמש עשרה שנים בלבד לאחר שנוצר, המידע האצור בתוך הלייזר-דיסקים היה כעת כמעט בלתי נגיש. שני מיליון וחצי הפאונד שהושקעו בפרוייקט דומסדיי הדיגיטלי ירדו לטימיון: אף תלמיד בית ספר או אזרח סקרן אינו יכול לקרוא את המאמרים או לצפות בתמונות.

הסיבה, כפי שאולי כבר ניחשתם, הייתה שטכנולוגיית הלייזר דיסק לא תפסה אחיזה בקרב הציבור הרחב ולא החזיקה מעמד זמן רב. הקומפקט-דיסק, שנכנס לשימוש כמה שנים בלבד לאחר שנסתיים פרוייקט דומסדיי, דחק את רגלי הלייזר דיסק. היצרנים הפסיקו לייצר את הרכיבים האלקטרוניים המתאימים, וב-2002 היו רק כמה ערכות דומסדיי בודדות שנותרו פעילות, רובן במוזיאונים וארכיונים. ההשוואה המתבקשת לספר דומסדיי, שניתן לעלעל בו גם כמעט אלף שנה לאחר שנכתב, לא הייתה מחמיאה במיוחד- או כפי שהגדיר זאת מומחה מחשבים שהתראיין לכתבה: 'יש לנו מזל ששייקספיר לא כתב את המחזות שלו על PC.."
בעיית השימור הדיגיטלי

סיפורו של פרוייקט דומסדיי הוא דוגמא מייצגת לאתגר שבפניו אנו ניצבים כשאנו מבקשים לשמר מידע דיגיטלי. אקדים ואומר שחלק גדול מהדברים שנדון בהם תקף גם לגבי שימור מידע שאינו דיגיטלי, כמו מוזיקה על גבי תקליטי ויניל או קלטות אודיו.

בחלוקה גסה ניתן להפריד את בעיית השימור לשלושה מרכיבים עיקריים. הראשון הוא שימור המדיה שעליה מאוחסן המידע- למשל, דיסקים, קסטות וכו'. השני הוא שימור המערכות שקוראות את המידע מהמדיה- למשל, נגן DVD ופטיפון. המרכיב השלישי הוא שימור התוכנה שבעזרתה מפוענח המידע הדיגיטלי הגולמי ומומר לתמונות, אותיות, קול וכו'.

נפתח תחילה דווקא ברכיב השני: שימור המערכות שקוראות את המידע הדיגיטלי, האפסים והאחדות, מתוך המדיה עליה הם מאוחסנים.

ספר נייר יכול להכיל רק כמות מועטה של מידע: עשרות עד כמה מאות אלפי מילים, בדרך כלל, ועוד כמה תמונות או תרשימים. דיסקים, שבבים ואמצעי איחסון מודרניים דומים יכולים להכיל נפח אדיר של מידע: אנציקלופדיות שלמות, סרטים, קטעי קול ועוד. אך היכולת לדחוס כמויות גדולות של מידע דיגיטלי לתוך אמצעי איחסון אלה כרוכה תמיד בשימוש במערכת שתתווך בינינו ובין המדיה עליה שמור המידע. כדי לקרוא טקסט שנכתב על דף נייר צריך רק זוג עיניים, אך כדי לקרוא טקסט ששמור על דיסק-און-קי או CD, צריך מחשב שמסוגל לקרוא מהם את המידע הדיגיטלי ותוכנה שתפענח את האפסים והאחדות ותמיר אותם בחזרה לאותיות, מספרים, תמונות שאנו מסוגלים להבין.

ב-BBC נפלו קורבן לבחירה חסרת מזל בטכנולוגיית אחסון שלא החזיקה מעמד הרבה זמן, אבל קשה להאשים אותם. טכנולוגיות רבות נעלמו בשלושים השנים האחרונות: לרבים מאיתנו יש בבית היום תקליטי ויניל ישנים, סרטי פילם, דיסקטים עתיקים, קסטות וידיאו ועוד התקני אחסון שמתיישנים לאיטם במגירות חשוכות- כולם קורבנות של התיישנות טכנולוגית מואצת.

סביר להניח שהעלמותם של כונני ה-DVD, הפטיפונים ודומיהם תקשה על הארכיאולוגים העתידיים לחלץ את המידע מהדיסקים והתקליטים שברשותם- אבל לא יותר מדי. ברגע שמבינים איך בדיוק מיוצגים אפס ואחד על פניו של DVD, למשל, קל יחסית לבנות מכונה שתחליף את כונן ה-DVD ותקרא את תוכן הדיסק. הבעיה המשמעותית יותר היא שבלעדי הכוננים והנגנים, יכול להיות שרק חלק קטן מהמידע הקיים בימינו יצליח לשרוד מאות שנים. מדוע?
הצורך בגיבוי

כל מדיית אחסון מידע פגיעה לבלייה טבעית. דיסקים קשיחים, למשל, רגישים במיוחד לבלאי מכני: דיסק קשיח טיפוסי מחזיק מעמד שלוש עד חמש שנים בממוצע לפני שתקלה במנוע או באלקטרוניקה הרגישה מוציאה אותו מכלל פעולה. קומפקט דיסקים ו-DVD, במיוחד כאלה שנצרבו בבית ולא במפעל, מחזיקים מעמד עשר עד חמש עשרה שנה. אם יש לנו בבית דיסק שמכיל מידע חשוב ויקר ערך במיוחד אפשר, למשל, להגן עליו ולהאריך את חייו באופן משמעותי על ידי אחסון בתנאים אופטימליים של לחות נמוכה וכו'- אבל מי מבטיח לנו שילדנו או נכדינו ישמרו על הדיסק באותם התנאים? מי מבטיח ששריפה או הצפה לא יהרסו אותו? וגם אם הדיסק ישרוד, בטווח הארוך תהליכי בלייה איטיים יותר כמו חמצון או התפוגגות הדרגתית של שדה מגנטי יעשו את פעולתם והמידע יימחק.

זו, כמובן, לא בעיה חדשה: גם הנייר האיכותי ביותר מתפורר, בסופו של דבר. הפתרון מאז ומתמיד היה לגבות את המידע על ידי יצירת עותקים חדשים שלו. למשל, חלק ניכר מהספרים ששרדו מימי קדם אל תקופתנו הם ספרים שהועתקו באופן ידני, מילה במילה, על ידי נזירים מסורים.

אך היכולת שלנו לגבות את המידע הדיגיטלי תלויה במידה רבה בזמינותן של המערכות המתווכות. אם אין לנו בבית נגן וידיאו, למשל, אזי כדי לגבות את הקלטות הישנות צריך ללכת למעבדה מיוחדת ולשלם כסף כדי להמיר אותם ל-DVDים. חלק גדול מהאנשים לא יטרחו לעשות זאת, או שייזכרו בקלטות הישנות שלהם רק אחרי שיהיה זה מאוחר מדי והסרטים המגנטיים נרקבו ונמחקו. במילים אחרות, כדי שהמידע יגיע בשלמותו אל העתיד עלינו לדאוג לגבות אותו כאן ועכשיו- ובלעדי הקוראים, הנגנים ושאר המערכות המתווכות, קשה מאד לדאוג לגיבוי מסודר.
גיבוי בענן

ראוי לציין שגם בתנאים אופימליים, גיבוי כמויות גדולות של מידע הוא אתגר לא פשוט. רבים משתמשים בשירותי גיבוי דרך האינטרנט- מה שמכונה 'גיבוי בענן'- אבל גם הפתרון הזה אינו מושלם.

חברות המציעות שירותי גיבוי בענן, כמו 'גוגל' ו'אמזון' למשל, מבינות שאמינות היא שם המשחק ומשקיעות מיליארדי דולרים בהקמת מרכזי מידע ענקיים בכל רחבי העולם, שמצויידים במערכות מיזוג אוויר מתקדמות, גנרטורים לאספקת חשמל חלופית וכדומה. ובכל זאת, תקלות קורות. למשל, אחד התהליכים הרגישים בתחזוקת מרכז מידע שכזה היא שדרוג תכנה, שכמעט תמיד חייב להתבצע תוך כדי עבודה שגרתית, מבלי להפסיק את השירות ללקוחות. תהליך השדרוג הוא כה עדין ומורכב, עד שאחד ממהנדסיה של 'גוגל' השווה אותו להחלפת הצמיגים במכונית תוך כדי שהיא נוסעת במאה קמ"ש בכביש המהיר.

ואכן, בשנת 2009 ארעו בגוגל שתי תקלות שבמהלכן נמחקו כמה אלפי תיבות דואר אלקטרוני ב-Gmail. הסיבה הייתה עדכון תוכנה שהשתבש. למרבה המזל, ב'גוגל' היו מוכנים לאפשרות הזו: כל המידע של המשתמשים היה מגובה מבעוד מועד על קלטות מגנטיות, ושוחזר בתוך מספר שעות. לכמה מלקוחותיה של 'אמזון' לא היה כזה מזל: ב-2011 הודיעה החברה שבעקבות תקלה טכנית אבדו 0.07 אחוזים מהמידע שאוחסן באחד ממרכזי המידע שלה. 0.07 אחוז לא נשמע כמו מספר גדול, אבל עשוי להיות מתורגם בפועל למאות ואלפי ג'יגהבייט של מידע. במילים אחרות, גיבוי לענן הוא פתרון טוב- אבל הוא אינו פתרון קסם.
אחסון מידע בדנ"א

בכל זאת, קיימת 'טכנולוגיה' עתיקה-חדשה שכנראה תהיה לנו לעזר בעתיד: הדנ"א. המולקולה הלוליינית שנמצאת בתוך כל תא חי היא המדיה המושלמת לאחסון מידע, פטנט שהטבע שכלל עד שלמות במשך מיליארדי שנות אבולוציה. גרם אחד של מולקולות דנ"א מסוגל להכיל 2 טרה-בתים של מידע, או פי שניים מדיסק קשיח, ובתנאים מתאימים לשמור עליו במשך עשרות אלפי שנים. עדות טובה לכך היא המידע הגנטי שאנחנו מחלצים כיום משרידיהן של ממותות שהלכו לעולמן בעידן הקרח. היכולת העקרונית להשתמש בדנ"א כמדיה לאחסון מידע דיגיטלי כבר קיימת: לפני כשנתיים הצליחו קבוצה של מדענים אירופאים לשמור כמה עשרות תמונות, קטעי שמע וסונטות של שייקספיר בתוך מולקולת דנ"א, ולשחזר אותם מאוחר יותר בהצלחה.

העובדה שדנ"א הוא המדיה שעליה שומרים כל בעלי החיים בטבע את המידע הגנטי שלהם משחקת לטובתנו באופן נוסף: דנ"א הוא כל כך אוניברסלי, עד שאין כמעט ספק שכל חברה אנושית עתידית בעלת ידע טכנולוגי סביר תהיה מסוגלת לקרוא אותו. התחום נמצא עדיין בחיתוליו, אבל אין כמעט ספק שבתוך כמה עשרות שנים אחסון מידע בדנ"א יהיה נפוץ ויומיומי.
פרוייקט דומסדיי: מאמצי שימור

בחזרה לדומסדיי. לאחר שהתפרסמה הכתבה ב'אובזרבר' והציבור הרחב התוודע למצבו העגום של הפרוייקט, החלו מספר קבוצות ובודדים במאמצי שימור והצלה של המידע שבשני הדיסקים. המשמרים, שחלקם היו חובבים וחלקם באו מרקע אקדמי או מקצועי, פעלו במקביל וברוב הזמן ללא קשר ישיר אלו עם אלו. כזכור, בנוסף לשני הדיסקים הכילה ערכת דומסדיי גם נגן לייזר-דיסק ייעודי. למרבה המזל, כמה מהנגנים פעלו כשורה ובאמצעותם ניתן היה לקרוא את המידע האצור על הדיסק בקלות יחסית. אך כאן נתקלו כל המשמרים במרכיב השלישי ואולי המורכב ביותר של בעיית השימור הדיגיטלי: בעיית התוכנה.

כפי שציינתי קודם, כדי להקל על המשתמשים את הניווט בסבך המאמרים, התמונות והסרטונים שנשמרו על הדיסקים יצרו מהנדסי דומסדיי מערכת של תפריטים וחלונות שבאמצעותה ניתן היה לאתר את המידע הרצוי ולצפות בו. מערכת זו נכתבה בשפת תכנות בשם BCPL. BCPL הייתה שפה מתקדמת לזמנה, וחלק מתכונותיה שולבו מאוחר יותר בשפת C הפופולרית- אבל גם היא, כמו הלייזר-דיסק, יצאה משימוש ומחשבים מודרניים סטנדרטיים אינם מבינים אותה עוד. מכאן שלמרות שבידי המשמרים היה את המידע הגולמי- האפסים והאחדות שאוחסנו על הדיסקים- לא הייתה בידיהם היכולת לפענח אותו ולהמיר אותו בחזרה לטקסט או תמונות. הדבר דומה לתרגיל חשבון שמחקנו ממנו את כל סימני החיבור, חיסור, שוויון וכולי: המספרים עדיין שם, אבל קשה מאד להבין מה הייתה המשמעות המקורית שלהם.
החייאת הפרוייקט

מתכנת חובב בשם אדריאן פירס (Pearce) הצליח בשנת 2004, אחרי מאמצים רבים, לשחזר חלק מאלגוריתם הפענוח ולחלץ חלק גדול מהטקסים והתמונות שהיו בדיסקים. הוא העלה את המידע לאתר אינטרנט שהקים כדי שיהיה זמין לקהל הרחב, כפי שהתכוונו הוגי הפרוייקט במקור. עם זאת, פירס לא הצליח לשחזר את מערכת התפריטים והחלונות, כך שלמרות כל הכוונות הטובות הגולשים באתר עדיין לא זכו לאותה חוויית משתמש מקורית שחווה מי שהשתמש בנגן הלייזר-דיסק המקורי.

יש מי שיראו בחלק זה של המידע, ממשק המשתמש, שולי ולא-חשוב: אחרי הכל, המאמרים והתמונות הם לב ליבו של הפרוייקט, לא? יש בזה משהו, אבל אסור לזלזל בחשיבותו של ממשק המשתמש. דמיינו לעצמם את הארכיאולוג הדיגיטלי העתידי שלנו, בעוד אלף שנה מהיום, מגלה אייפון מהדגם הראשון- ללא ספק תגלית חשובה ששופכת אור על מהפכת הטלפונים החכמים של דורנו. אבל מה יקרה אם הארכיאולוג יצליח לפענח רק את המידע שעל האייפון- תמונות, סמסים וכו'- אבל לא את ממשק המשתמש? סביר להניח שהוא ישבור את הראש בניסיון להבין מדוע כולם התלהבו כל כך מהאייפון כשיצא לשוק, ומדוע המתפללים בכנסיית המק שמול הבית שלו מעלים זבחים לסטיב הקדוש מזה מאות שנים.

אחת הדרכים העקרוניות להתגבר על בעיית התיישנות התוכנה היא להמיר את המידע באופן תקופתי מפורמט לפורמט כדי שניתן יהיה לפתוח אותו בתוכנות מודרניות. למשל, אם יש ברשותנו תקליט ישן ופטיפון תקין אפשר להעתיק את המוזיקה שעליו למחשב ולשמור אותה כקבצי mp3 שכל תוכנה עכשווית יודעת לנגן. כשפורמט ה-mp3 יוחלף בפורמט אחר, נמיר את הקבצים לפורמט החדש- וכך הלאה וכך הלאה, עד אין קץ. זו נראית כמו אסטרטגיית שימור טובה, אבל גם לה יש חסרונות.

במסגרת שימור פרוייקט דומסדיי, למשל, שני מתכנתים נוספים, אריק פרימן (Freeman) וסיימון גווררו (Guerrero), ניסו לחלץ את התמונות שהיו מאוחסנות על הדיסקים. הטכניקה בה השתמשו כדי להמיר את התמונות לפורמט מודרני פגעה באיכותן, והתמונות המומרות לא היו מוצלחות במיוחד. זו דוגמא לבעייה נפוצה בהמרת פורמטים: אין כל בטחון שבזמן ההמרה חלק מהמידע המקורי לא יילך לאיבוד. כמו תמונה שמשכפלים אותה, ואז משכפלים את השכפול, ואת השכפול של השכפול של השכפול וכולי- יש סכנה שאחרי כמה וכמה המרות, התוצאה הסופית תהיה איבוד חלק משמעותי מהמידע המקורי.

במקרה של אריק וסיימון, היה להם מזל: מהנדס בשם אנדי פיני (Finney), שהיה חלק מצוות הפיתוח של פרוייקט דומסדיי בשנות השמונים, איתר בארכיון נידח סרטים מגנטיים ועליהם העתקים באיכות גבוהה של התמונות. מתוך הסרטים המגנטיים (שגם הם החלו להתבלות באופן מורגש) ניתן היה לשחזר את התמונות בהצלחה רבה יותר. אריק וסיימון שיתפו פעולה עם ה-BBC, וב-2011 העלו אתר אינטרנט בשם Domesday Reloaded, שגם בו יכלו הגולשים לעיין במידע ואף לשפר ולהוסיף לו. לרוע המזל האתר אינו פעיל נכון לעכשיו, אם כי הוא אמור לשוב לפעולה בעתיד הקרוב.
אמולציה

קבוצה שלישית שניסתה להציל את הפרוייקט הייתה קבוצה בשם CAMiLEON: צוות של אנשי אקדמיה מאוניברסיטאות אמריקניות ובריטיות. אנשי CAMiLEON נקטו בגישה שונה לגמרי של שימור: אמולציה.

'אמולציה' היא חיקוי. נניח, לשם ההסבר, שאתם מאד רוצים לנסוע לחופשה בתאילנד- אבל אין לכם זמן או כסף. מה עושים? הנה פתרון. קחו חול ושפכו על רצפת החדר. הפעילו תנור לוהט. השמיעו ברמקולים מוזיקה תאילנדית מרגיעה ורחש גלי ים. בקשו מחבר להטריד אתכם בכל כמה דקות בהצעות לקנות אננס, קוקוס, בננה לוטי או חרגולים מטוגנים. עכשיו שכבו על החול ועיצמו עיניים…ואתם בתאילנד.

זו, על רגל אחת, אמולציה: טכנולוגיה שיוצרת 'מחשב וירטואלי' בתוך המחשב האמיתי, כך שתוכנה שרצה בתוך אותו מחשב וירטואלי לא תדע להרגיש בהבדל. זה בדיוק מה שעשו אנשי קבוצת CAMiLEON: הם יצרו סביבה וירטואלית שחיקתה את החומרה העתיקה שכבר לא הייתה קיימת במציאות, ובאמצעותה הפעילו את התוכנה המקורית של פרוייקט דומסדיי- התוכנה שנכתבה בשפת BCPL המיושנת. באופן זה הצליחו אנשי הקבוצה לשחזר את חוויית השימוש המקורית של ערכת דומסדיי באופן כמעט מושלם, כולל תפריט הניווט, התמונות, הסרטונים וכו'.

אמולציה היא גישה שנחשבת בעיני רבים כבעלת הפוטנציאל הטוב ביותר לשימור ארוך טווח של מידע דיגיטלי. חסרונה הגדול הוא שהקמת הסביבה הוירטואלית היא עניין מורכב הדורש מיומנות גדולה, ולכן דורשת גם השקעה גדולה יחסית של זמן וכסף. מאידך, הניסיון מוכיח שאמולציה עובדת: אם תבקשו לשחק כיום במשחקי מחשב שנכתבו בשנות השמונים למחשבים כמו אטארי, קומודור ו-Zx Spectrum, תוכלו לעשות כן למרות שהמחשבים עצמם כבר מזמן לא נמצאים בסביבה: ניתן להשיג היום באינטרנט אמולטורים שיוצרים 'קומודור' ו'ספקטרום' וירטואליים בתוך המחשב הביתי, ומאפשרים לנו לשקוע בנוסטלגיה.
אתגר משפטי

הבעיה האחרונה שעימה התמודדו משמרי פרוייקט דומסדיי היא בעיה שלמרבה ההפתעה אינה טכנולוגית כלל, כי אם משפטית. כמעט כל מאמצי השימור התמקדו בדיסק אחד בלבד מתוך השניים: דיסק 'הקהילה', הדיסק שהכיל תמונות ומאמרים ששלח הציבור הרחב. הדיסק השני, 'הדיסק הלאומי', הוא אתגר מסוג אחר: הוא מכיל מפות, סטטיסטיקות ותכנים נוספים שהופקו באופן מקצועי. תכנים אלה מוגנים על ידי זכויות יוצרים, ותמיד קיים החשש שמא מישהו מבעלי זכויות היוצרים יטען שאקט שימור המידע הוא למעשה סוג של העתקה ללא רשות, ויתבע את המשמרים! זו, כמובן, בעיה שהארכיאולוגים העתידיים שלנו לא יצטרכו לחשוש ממנה- אחרי הכל, זכויות היוצרים יפוגו בעוד תשעים שנה בערך- אבל מצד שני, אם אי אפשר לשכפל תוכן שמוגן בזכויות יוצרים, הרי שגם אי אפשר לגבות אותו- ומכאן שאולי לא ישרוד כלל…

שימור דיגיטלי, אם כן, הוא עניין לא פשוט, וללא ספק מקצוע הארכיאולוגיה עומד לשנות את פניו מקצה לקצה במאות השנים הבאות. אמולטורים ומחשבים מתוחכמים יחליפו את המברשת והמכושונים, וכנראה שהארכיאולוגים יבלו במעבדה ממוזגת יותר מאשר בחפירות מאובקות…
לסיכום

ומה לגבינו, האנשים הפשוטים? רבים מאיתנו נהנים לדפדף באלבומים הישנים ולראות תמונות של סבא וסבתא כשהיו צעירים ויפים. בהנחה שלנכדינו וניננו לא תהיה גישה לכלי שימור ושחזור מתוחכמים, כנראה שאם חשוב לנו שיראו אותנו מחייכים בחליפת החתונה שלנו- כדאי למצוא חנות צילום טובה שמדפיסה תמונות על נייר איכותי. ויפה שעה אחת קודם.

How do you quantify all of the information that everyone on earth produces in a year?

IDC is an American research firm that specializes in telecommunications and information technology. And each year, it conducts a comprehensive survey to assess just that — they try to quantify all the books, pictures, sound files, videos, articles — all the information produced on earth in one year. It’s difficult to know how reliable their numbers are – and IDC has been criticized in the past for inaccuracies – but at the very least, IDC’s research gives us a rough estimate for the volume of information that all of the humanity produces each year.

For example: in 2005, IDC estimated that the total volume of human information was 130 exabytes. And just to put that into perspective, one byte, the basic unit of digital information, is equivalent to a single letter. And an Exabyte is ten to the power of eighteen bytes. So, if, for example, an average episode of CMPOD is about fifty megabytes of information – then one exabyte is twenty-three million years of continuous listening to the show…

In 2012, the total volume of information was 2,800 exabytes. That’s twenty times the volume of information in 2005. This means that the total volume of human information is more than doubling each year. In the age of digital cameras, computerized word processing and personal blogs, it’s easier than ever to create vast amounts of new information. In 2020, IDC estimates, data volume will reach 40 Zettabytes or 40 thousand exabytes.
Future Archaeology

Today’s archaeologists are excavating the ground, trying to reconstruct a reliable picture of what life was like in ancient times. It is not an easy job: the amount of information available to archaeologists is minimal. At first glance, the wealth of information we create today should be a boon to archaeologists and historians of the future: they should have no problem to understand who we were and what we thought. After all, we document our lives in countless ways – from movies to blogs to podcasts like this one.

But nothing is as simple as it seems. As we shall soon see, the wealth of digital information we produce – thousands upon thousands of exabytes – will create new and unique challenges to these future archaeologists.
The Domesday Book

In 1066 Duke William of Normandy invaded the British Islands, defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson, and became William The Conqueror, King of England. But after taking the throne, King William now had to deal with the financial fallout of the invasion: he had soldiers to pay and forts to build, and these all costs money. The kingdom’s main source of income was then, as it is now, taxes paid by the citizens – but the post-war chaos meant that the Treasury officials were no longer sure how much should each citizen pay.

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So in 1086 William decided to launch an ambitious operation of unprecedented scale. Surprisingly, it was not a military operation but rather a statistical one. He sent officials to roam the length and breadth of England and document as accurately as possible the land that each citizen owned, their income and their profession. All that data was bound into two volumes, which together were known as “The Domesday Book”. The name ‘Domesday’ is a derived from the Christian Doomsday or Judgment Day. On Judgment Day, according to tradition, each person shall be judged by his good and bad deeds, and this judgment will be final and unchallengeable. Similarly, information recorded in the Domesday Book, which determines the taxes you owe, would be final and could not be challenged.

Amazingly, The Domesday Book has survived to this day: If you have contacts in the British National Archives and a solid knowledge of Latin, you can scroll through it and read the contents. For historians, the Domesday Book is a godsend: no other historical document of that time so systematically describes a moment in the life of an entire country.
The BBC’s Domesday Project

In 1986, the BBC decided to celebrate the 900th anniversary of this unique book and embarked on an ambitious operation of its own. The BBC’s “Domesday Project” was to be the modern equivalent of the ancient Domesday Book: a comprehensive attempt to capture a moment in the life of the British nation. A million people, mostly school children from across the UK, wrote about their daily lives, their communities, and their cities. All in all, The BBC collected 150,000 pages of text, 20,000 photos and hundreds of maps, statistics, and videos. All this information was saved in digital form to be browsed with relatively inexpensive Personal Computers, for the enjoyment and education of future school children.

After a comprehensive review of the available storage technology, the project leaders decided to use the LaserDisc to store the information. Back then, it was cutting edge technology: a golden disc, the size of a vinyl record. They stuffed all the articles, maps and videos onto two such discs: the first was called the “Community Disc” and it consisted mainly of articles and photos from around the UK. The second was the “National Disc” which contained things like maps, graphs, statistical data and photos taken by professional photographers.

A major goal of the project was to allow users to have easy access to the information stored in the discs, and for this purpose, the BBC developed a special user interface software which enabled the user to locate a particular article or photo using keywords, a menu, the location on a map and more. Since PC were only in their infancy, the BBC also developed a dedicated LaserDisc player that was able to read the two disks and display their content on a screen.
A different Reality

The ambitious project was completed on time and within budget…but was ultimately a failure. The kit containing the LaserDisc player and the two discs sold for approximately 5000 pounds – a hefty sum that only very few schools and public organizations could afford to pay. As a result, only a few copies of the Domesday Project Kit were ever distributed to the public, and the project failed to recoup its investment.
Nevertheless, everyone who took part in the BBC’s Domesday Project was proud of it. They all felt that the data collected for the project would be as important and useful for future historians as the original Domesday Book is useful for historians of our time.

But an article published in 2002 in the British newspaper The Observer revealed a very different reality. Only Fifteen years after the project was concluded – the information stored on the discs was practically inaccessible. Despite the two and a half million pound investment in the digital Domesday Project, no high school student or curious citizen can browse the articles or view the pictures.

The reason, as you may have guessed, is that the LaserDisc technology did not survive very long. It lost out to the smaller Compact Disc, and it didn’t catch on with the general public. Manufacturers stopped producing LaserDisc readers, and by 2002 only a handful of the BBC’s Domesday Project kits were usable, preserved mostly in museums and archives. The irony of the situation was perfectly captured in the Observer’s article:

“By contrast, the original Domesday Book – an inventory of eleventh-century England compiled in 1086 by Norman monks – is in fine condition in the Public Record Office […], and can be accessed by anyone who can read and has the right credentials. ‘It is ironic, but the 15-year-old version is unreadable, while the ancient one is still perfectly usable,’ said computer expert Paul Wheatley. ‘We’re lucky Shakespeare didn’t write on an old PC.’”
The Challenges of Information Preservation

The story of the Domesday Project represents the challenges we face as we try to preserve digital information. These challenges can be divided into three broad categories.

The first is the preservation of the digital storage device, like the LaserDiscs themselves. The second is the preservation of the systems that read the information — this is the LaserDisc reader in the Domesday Project Kit. The third challenge is the preservation of the software that reads the stored binary information and translates it into photographs, letters or sounds that we humans can understand.

Of course, these challenges are applicable to almost all existing information storage methods. In DVDs, for example, the preservation might include the DVD discs, the DVD players and the software used to decode the stored data. It’s also worth mentioning that most of those same challenges apply to the preservation of analog information – like music on vinyl or cassettes.
Preserving The Players And Readers

So, let’s begin with the challenge of preserving the player and readers that allow us to access the digital data. Paper books can only contain a small amount of information: dozens to several hundreds of thousands of words, and some pictures or diagrams. Discs, chips, and other modern storage devices can hold a lot more information: Complete encyclopedias, movies, albums. But the ability to store such large amounts of digital information in such small spaces comes at a cost: you’ll always need a machine to read that information and translate the binary code. To read the text written on a piece of paper, all you need is eyes – but to read text stored on a USB drive, for example, you need a silicon chip to access the memory cells and read the information they hold.

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These chips and devices can be quite complex, but surprisingly, this potentially complicated technical issue is probably the easiest challenge we’re facing. Once you understand how zeros and ones are represented inside a USB drive, for instance – it’s relatively easy to build a machine to able to access the content. Yes, it might take some hard work and serious expertise – but future archaeologists should be able to solve these kinds of technical problems. BUT, the rapid obsolescence of readers and players still poses a threat to the actual preservation of the data itself. Why is that?
Natural Decay

Well, every storage media we have is ultimately vulnerable to natural decay. Hard disks, for example, are extremely sensitive to mechanical wear: A typical hard disk lasts three to five years on average before it’s motor fails. CDs and DVDs, especially those burned at home and not in a factory, can hold onto their data for ten or fifteen years. We can extend the life of a disc by storing it in optimal conditions — low humidity, low temperature – but can we be certain that our children and grandchildren will do the same? Can we be sure that a fire or flood wouldn’t destroy it? And even if the disc somehow survives all these potential dangers – still, long-term processes like slow oxidation or the gradual dissipation of magnetic fields would eventually destroy the information on it.

This, of course, is not a new problem: even the best quality paper disintegrates eventually. The solution has always been to Replicate the data – backing it up by creating new copies of it. A lot of the books that survived from antiquity were copied by hand by dedicated monks. But our ability to copy and backup the digital information depends largely on the availability of the devices that mediate between us and the storage media. The BBC fell victim to an unfortunate choice of storage technology: the LaserDisc, which didn’t last very long. But it’s hard to blame the BBC’s engineers: many technologies have emerged and then disappeared in the last thirty years. Many of us still have old cassettes, floppy disks, VHS tapes and other obsolete storage devices that are slowly decaying in the back of a drawer.

And if, for example, you don’t have a VHS player at home, backing up old tapes means you have to go to a special lab and pay to convert them to DVD. The sad truth is that many of us don’t bother to do that, and then the tapes just rot away. In other words, to make sure all this stuff survives, we need to replicate it – but without those readers and players, the backups will probably never be created in the first place.
Solving The Problem of Media Decay

So, How can we solve the problem of media decay?
One possible strategy is a better replication solution: backing up the information in a way that would make it less prone to accidental destruction or decay. An interesting backup solution which emerged in the early 2000’s is the cloud. Companies that offer those cloud backup services – like Google and Amazon – understand the importance of reliability, and invest billions in setting up huge data centers around the world, equipped with advanced air conditioning systems, generators for alternative power supply and so on. These companies are better equipped to deal with replicating and storing massive amounts of data like images and videos, than the average computer user at home.

Still, Cloud Storage is not a magic bullet. For example, one of the dangerous and error prone processes is a software upgrade in the data center. Such an upgrade is almost always performed during routine operations and without any downtime for the customers. A Google engineer once compared this delicate and complex process to replacing the tires of a car traveling on a highway at 90 mph…

And indeed, Googe saw two such failures in 2009, when a few thousand Gmail mailboxes were accidently deleted during a software upgrade. Fortunately, Google was prepared for such a possibility: all the users’ information was backed up on magnetic tapes, and was restored within a few hours. Some of Amazon’s customers, however, weren’t so lucky: in 2011, the company announced that a technical glitch caused the loss of 0.07 percent of all the information stored in one of its data centers. 0.07 percent does not sound like such a big number, but it’s actually hundreds of thousands of gigabytes. In other words, cloud backup is probably a good solution for data replication – but it’s not bullet-proof.

A different strategy for handling media decay is creating a more durable storage method. One such new and promising technology is actually quite an ancient one: DNA. This double helix molecule which exists in every living cell is the perfect medium for information storage, a patent perfected by nature over billions of years. One gram of DNA molecules can hold two terabytes of information – twice the capacity of an average hard disk – and it can do so for tens of thousands of years, under the right storage conditions. For example, scientists have been able to extract intact genetic information from remains of wooly mammoths that died during the last ice age. The fundamental technology for using DNA as the storage medium already exists: in 2011, a group of scientists demonstrated the successful storage, and later extraction, of several dozen text documents, images and audio files in a DNA molecule.
The fact that DNA is the media on which all life forms keep their genetic information plays in our favor in another way: DNA is so universal, that there is little doubt that any future human society with reasonable technological ability will have the means to read it.
The Software Problem of Information Preservation

So, let’s get back to the BBC’s Domesday project. When the general public became aware of the dismal state of the project several volunteers and academic researchers embarked on various preservation and rescue efforts.
As you might recall, in addition to the two LaserDiscs, the Domesday Project Kit also contained a LaserDisc reader. Some of these readers were still functional, and the information stored on the discs could be read with relative ease. But it was here that the restorers encountered the third, and maybe the most complicated challenge of digital preservation: the software problem. What is the software problem?

Let’s say I’ve got some tomatoes and an onion. I have all these ingredients here on the table – but no recipe book. There are many possible ways to use these ingredients and many possible dishes. How do I know which is the right one?

This is exactly the same problem we are facing with software preservation. When you read the binary data from a DVD or Hard Drive, for example, you end up with a long long list of binary bits – ones and zeros. These bits have no inherent meaning by themselves: it is up to us, humans, to give them this meaning. We need to agree on the proper way to decode these bits: for example, we could agree that 1001 in binary is the decimal number ‘9’. Without this pre-agreed interpretation – 1001 might mean the letter A, or a pixel on the screen – or maybe something else entirely.

In many cases, this pre-agreed interpretation is standardized and well known. For example, an MP3 file has a defined structure, so any software which implements the MP3 standard can read and decode the bits in the files as sounds. But what happens if the encoding and decoding schemes are not standardized? Well, in that case, all we can hope for is that someone, somewhere, has kept a record of decoding scheme.
Saving The Domesday Project

In the case of the Domesday Project, there were still a few working LaserDisc readers that could run the software and decode the data stored in discs. The problem was that there were only very few such readers, mostly in museums, and this meant that the general public had no practical way to access the collected data. Running the same software on a regular, modern computer, was not a viable option either. This software was written in a programming language called BCPL, which was an advanced programming language for its time – but it went the way of the LaserDisc, and today’s computers can’t read it.

A few volunteers took it upon themselves to try and retrieve the data stored on the two LaserDiscs. In 2004, an amateur programmer, Adrienne Pearce, succeeded after much effort, to reconstruct some of the decoding algorithms. He extracted a large part of the texts and images from the discs and uploaded the information to a website he created. Two other programmers, Eric Freeman and Simon Guerrero, with the help of the engineer Andy Finney who was part of the Project’s original development team in the 80’s – located the original magnetic tapes used to store the Domesday data. These tapes held higher-quality versions of the data. Freeman and Guerrero collaborated with the BBC to create a website called “Domesday Reloaded”, which allows visitors to browse the project’s data.

However, Pearce, Freeman, and Guerrero were not able to fully restore the original software’s navigation system of menus and windows, so the website’s visitors still could not enjoy the same user experience they would have had with the original Domesday Project Kit.
The Importance of the User Interface

Now, There are those who will see the user interface as unimportant. After all, the articles, images, and graphs are the heart of the project, aren’t they?
They certainly are – but we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the user interface as well. Imagine our future digital archaeologist, a thousand years from now, discovering the ancient remains of a first generation iPhone. This would be, without a doubt, an important discovery that would shed light on the “smartphone revolution” of our generation. But what if the archaeologist manages to extract only the data on the iPhone, like the photos and messages, but not the phone’s user interface software? Most likely, he’d scratch his head, trying to figure out what the big deal was.

So, how can we solve the problem of software obsolescence? Well, there are two basic strategies we can employ.
Software Preservation

The first is Migration: periodically convert the information from the “old” and outdated format to a newer format, so that modern software tools can handle it. For example, an audio file can be converted from the now-obscure 3GP format to the more modern MP3 format. When the times comes for the mp3 to be replaced, we’ll convert the files to the new format – And so on, ad infinitum. In essence, migration ‘bypasses’ the problem of software preservation by allowing us to use existing software instead of an old and problem-ridden one.

On the surface, migration looks like a good conservation strategy – but it also has its disadvantages. The most obvious one is that migration deals with data – but not with user interfaces, or it sometimes omits what is called the ‘Metadata’. Metadata is ‘external’ data which describes the main data we are trying to preserve. An MP3 file, for example, also contains metadata such as the name of the song, artist, and album. Depending on the migration method used, this metadata may or may not survive – and without it, the data can lose much of its original meaning.

A second, less obvious disadvantage is the danger that some of the original data will be lost during the migration process. MP3, for example, is a ‘lossy’ format – that is, it discards some of the sounds found in the original recording, sounds that the human ear can’t detect anyway. This means that some of the original recording data will be lost during the conversion from 3GP to MP3. After several migrations from one format to another, we might discover that a significant portion of the original data was lost forever – much like how a copy of a copy of a copy of a photo does not look as good as the original photo did.
Software Emulation

A second, and possibly better alternative is Emulation: a technology that creates a ‘virtual environment’ inside a real computer. A software running in the virtual environment will not be able to tell the difference: if your virtual environment fully mimics the original environment the software is supposed to run in – the software will function as it should. In the Domesday Project’s case, this means creating a virtual LaserDisc reader, so that when the software wants to read new data from a disc, it receives this data from the virtual reader.

This approach works especially well with old computer games. for example, you can easily find emulators on the web that will allow you to play very old games which were created for the Spectrum, Commodore, and other ancient computers – on your personal machine.

A third group of volunteers tried to save the Domesday Project. It was called CAMiLEON: they were a team of academics from the U.S. and the UK. The CAMiLEON group took the emulation approach: they created a virtual environment mimicking the old hardware that no longer exists in the real world. This way, the group managed to recreate the original experience of the Domesday Project, including using the navigation menus, browsing for photos, videos, and so forth.

Unfortunately, funding problems didn’t allow the CAMiLEON project to reach maturity, and it was aborted in 2004. Still, the emulation approach may have the best potential for long-term preservation of digital information. The big disadvantage of emulation is that the creation of a virtual environment is a complicated matter that requires a good measure of programming skills and intimate knowledge of the original device that you’re trying to emulate, so it also requires a relatively large investment of time and money. However, experience shows that emulation does work: all it takes is a few dedicated developers to create an emulation environment so that millions of users can enjoy it all over the world.
Digital Dark Ages

You might be surprised to learn that final problem facing the Domesday Project is not a technical one – but a legal one. Almost all of the preservation efforts focused on only a single disc – the ‘Community Disc’, which holds the photos and articles sent by the general public. The second disc, the ‘National Disc’, contains maps, graphs, and photos taken by professionals. This content is protected by copyright laws, and there’s always the fear that someday someone will sue the conservationists for copying the contents without proper permission…This problem won’t bother our future historians: after all, the copyright will expire in ninety years or so. But if replication, migration, and emulation are not possible today due to the legal limitations – there’s a very real chance that the information won’t survive into the future at all…

So, Digital preservation is not a simple matter. There are multiple challenges facing those who are trying to preserve the data we create for the sake of future generations: some are technical – such as the preservation of the storage media and software – and some are legal or financial. If we fail to face these preservation challenges, there is a risk that our current period will be regarded by future historians as the “Digital Dark Ages”, since there will be relatively few surviving texts, images, and videos from our time.

It’s also likely that future archaeologists will use tools that are very different from the ones used by today’s Emulators and sophisticated computers will replace brushes and pickaxes. These future archaeologists might find themselves missing the good old days of working on a real excavation site, instead of sitting in front of a computer all day…

And what about us, the common people? Many of us enjoy browsing old photo albums, looking at old black and white pictures of grandpa and grandma when they were young and beautiful. So if you want your grandchildren and great-grandchildren to see how good you looked when you were younger – your best bet? Find a good printer, and some quality photo paper….the sooner the better.

http://www.ranlevi.com/2013/04/30/ep127_digital_preservation/
http://www.cmpod.net/all-transcripts/a-domesday-failure-digital-info-preservation-text/
http://www.ranlevi.com/texts/ep127_digital_preservation_text/