Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Pay there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks in the future and says inside
Speaker 1: the museum's infinity goes up on trial. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is going to be
Speaker 1: part two of our two part episode about how to
Speaker 1: make It Last Forever, about the future of historical preservation
Speaker 1: and restoration, how to take the present and make it
Speaker 1: go the long haul. So if you haven't heard part
Speaker 1: one yet, you should go back and check out part
Speaker 1: one of this episode. We need to make a bunch
Speaker 1: of references to things we've already said. So you've I mean,
Speaker 1: I have faith in you guys. You're pretty quick on
Speaker 1: the uptake, you know, just just to head off any confusion. Sure,
Speaker 1: but without further ado, here is part due. It belongs
Speaker 1: in the museum. I hope that those that goes right
Speaker 1: into my rant about how they Okay, But let's run
Speaker 1: back to the past a little bit more. In fact,
Speaker 1: let's run farther back than we did with the idea
Speaker 1: of like an oil painting from the Renaissance. What about
Speaker 1: the condition of archaeological artifacts. Yeah, I want to pose
Speaker 1: the question, what's the future of stealing artifacts from other
Speaker 1: cultures and putting in them in your own museums? Okay,
Speaker 1: this is mostly a cheeky Indiana la Do you have
Speaker 1: an opinion? Is it Lauren's rant time? No? No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's okay, Well, I mean to actually, actually a kind
Speaker 1: of is because the past hundred and fifty years or
Speaker 1: so have included a whole lot of rich white people
Speaker 1: falling so much in love with another culture that they
Speaker 1: went there, bought and or just took a bunch of
Speaker 1: their stuff, and then brought it back home for private
Speaker 1: or public display. Well, clearly because these rich white people
Speaker 1: realize that whatever indigenous population isn't going to take the
Speaker 1: efforts to preserve that art, they have to take it
Speaker 1: on themselves. Well, and it's not enriching anyone's culture if
Speaker 1: they just leave it there, but they can enrich the
Speaker 1: lives of other rich white people if they bring it
Speaker 1: back to theirs. But I completely agree with it. I
Speaker 1: am in fact now ranting. But you know so that
Speaker 1: that sucks. We we generally try not to do that anymore.
Speaker 1: And there are some digital steps that are being taken
Speaker 1: to bring artifacts to interested parties without ever having to
Speaker 1: remove the pieces. We've talked about museums and cultural centers
Speaker 1: use of virtual reality and and a lot of organizations
Speaker 1: like that are hosting as many of their or as
Speaker 1: much of their collections online as possible and in really
Speaker 1: high quality photographs for free. But see an image of
Speaker 1: a thing is not the same as seeing a thing,
Speaker 1: there's sure, and well, I mean, one thing you can
Speaker 1: just rely on these days, hopefully to have some exchange,
Speaker 1: Like if you want to see artifacts from somewhere on
Speaker 1: the other side of the world, is that plenty of
Speaker 1: museums today do exhibit exchanges, right, there will be a
Speaker 1: traveling exhibit where something from Egypt comes to your local museum.
Speaker 1: Oh sure. And that, actually, I think is really that
Speaker 1: kind of international cooperation is the real future of dealing
Speaker 1: with with artifacts and sharing that kind of information across cultures.
Speaker 1: And it really gives me the work fundies every tomb version. Right.
Speaker 1: But you know, unfortunately, even if you leave a thing
Speaker 1: where you found it, or even if you have constructed
Speaker 1: a very careful museum exhibit in which it can travel,
Speaker 1: public visitation presents lots of problems for artifacts because even
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a cautious tourist who's not going
Speaker 1: around like poking the oil paintings or climbing on the statues,
Speaker 1: flash photography, taking flash photography, you're doing things like like
Speaker 1: opening doors, or possessing a body temperature that's higher than
Speaker 1: the air around you, or or breathing. Uh, people are
Speaker 1: lousy with breath just all the time, and and all
Speaker 1: all of these things create fluctuations in the temperature and humidity,
Speaker 1: which we have talked about is being not good. So
Speaker 1: let me guess there's a technology that will prevent us
Speaker 1: from breathing. I actually can name quite a few. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: humans have made a lot of technologies that prevent people
Speaker 1: from breathing in the long run. No, no, it's not there.
Speaker 1: But there is a project that is attempting to solve
Speaker 1: these problems by replicating the artwork, replicating specifically China's. And
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna say this wrong. I'm really sorry, magol.
Speaker 1: I think it's how you say Mago caves. Uh, it
Speaker 1: looks like Mogau if you're if you're a dumb American,
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's how you say it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a series of four hundred and nine two caves
Speaker 1: that were carved out of a cliff face in the
Speaker 1: Goulbi Desert and decorated by Buddhist monks and scholars and
Speaker 1: merchants from around three hundred to drede there. I don't
Speaker 1: have words to describe them that I can really say
Speaker 1: on air. They're they're, they're they're beautiful. They're really awesome.
Speaker 1: Um and that a local academy called the Don Huang
Speaker 1: Academy has teamed up with Los Angeles Getty Conservation Institute
Speaker 1: to painstakingly recreate three of these caves and and all
Speaker 1: of their painted walls and ceilings and all of their
Speaker 1: statuary and take them on international tours and exhibitions. One
Speaker 1: of these brooms has been touring around Asia for a while.
Speaker 1: They're going to hit the US for the first time
Speaker 1: in May of twenty six. And it's as though you
Speaker 1: put pyramid ceilings in like large two car garages and
Speaker 1: then covered them in an amazing artwork over the course
Speaker 1: of centuries. They're they're really beautiful. Well, yeah, I'm all
Speaker 1: in favor of that. I think that's really cool. Like,
Speaker 1: in fact, i've seen plenty of that already in in
Speaker 1: the more like a natural natural history kind of setting
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, because dinosaur bones that you see in
Speaker 1: a museum are probably not made of dinosaur bones. They're
Speaker 1: they're probably a plastic print of a dinosaur or mold.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of their St John's Castle in Limerick, Ireland.
Speaker 1: Um phenomenal if you are interested in medieval Renaissance history.
Speaker 1: It's a fantastic museum that also tries to recreate that
Speaker 1: experience of of not just you know, the castle at
Speaker 1: its height, but how it was built. And so they
Speaker 1: actually take advantage of the ruins to tell you how
Speaker 1: that section was created because you can see the cross sections.
Speaker 1: So so cool. A cool thing about uh presenting information
Speaker 1: in a way that is combining the original work with
Speaker 1: either a virtual representation or with uh with with replicas
Speaker 1: to get across the wonder without actually damaging that original work.
Speaker 1: Sure sure uh. And and like with paintings, there's some
Speaker 1: pretty high tech techniques that are that are being used
Speaker 1: to to study artifacts that have been worn down over
Speaker 1: time without damaging them any further. For example, some researchers
Speaker 1: out of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Missouri
Speaker 1: found that a scanning acoustic microscope can be used to
Speaker 1: reveal impressions and metal that have been worn invisible to
Speaker 1: the human eye. You know, for example, a smith's hallmark
Speaker 1: in in polished silver, or the design that was stamped
Speaker 1: into a coin. Uh, metal that has been worn smooth
Speaker 1: can still contain areas of compression and deformation where the
Speaker 1: stamps or the engravings were applied. And and so by
Speaker 1: taking these careful acoustic scans, you can really reveal the
Speaker 1: original patterns and and therefore, you know, you can let
Speaker 1: historians know when and where and how the piece was created.
Speaker 1: This is kind of like the zoom and enhance of
Speaker 1: archaeological world. Yeah, it's really I mean, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: never thought this would have been possible. It's pretty incredible. Okay,
Speaker 1: So a lot of these things that we're discussing, though,
Speaker 1: are at least somewhat static in nature. Like they're there
Speaker 1: a thing that has, you know, at some level, been
Speaker 1: carved or printed, or or developed in the case of film,
Speaker 1: or painted, and it's supposed to stay the way it is.
Speaker 1: But what about things that are supposed to work? And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like a machine, what if we want to
Speaker 1: keep a machine that has working parts and moving bits.
Speaker 1: You know here, just machines are never art Now, I
Speaker 1: have a few terminator friends who would take offense at
Speaker 1: that statement, but I'll say that machines aren't artists. Those
Speaker 1: those artistic cyborgs are fine, right right, Um, they do
Speaker 1: not deal with bad reviews very well. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you should never give your robot artists lasers. Mistig number
Speaker 1: one the example, I'm thinking about his classic cars, I
Speaker 1: don't know much of I'm not really a car guy.
Speaker 1: I've said then here before. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know a whole lot about cars, and personally don't care
Speaker 1: a whole lot about cars. But there are definitely people
Speaker 1: who see real artistry in like a great classic car,
Speaker 1: and keeping a classic car restored has got to be
Speaker 1: a somewhat different proposition from keeping a painting or a
Speaker 1: film restored. Well, it's fine that she used the word restored,
Speaker 1: because there are actually two different versions that are the preserved.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, preserved or restored. Yeah, whatever it means
Speaker 1: to key that car looking and working like it did
Speaker 1: when it was new. Right. So I had a brief
Speaker 1: conversation with Scott Benjamin who is one of the hosts
Speaker 1: of Car Stuff, an amazing podcasts made out of house
Speaker 1: to works, Great show, and Scott is an encyclopedia of
Speaker 1: auto knowledge. Up. Great guy and yeah, just a genuinely
Speaker 1: awesome guy. I would I would pose it that in fact,
Speaker 1: in this office office, he's the best of all of us.
Speaker 1: I'm never ever going to give anyone that title over myself.
Speaker 1: But I understand where you're coming from. Uh so I can't.
Speaker 1: I know that that's physically here you go. So I
Speaker 1: talked with him, and really there are two two methods
Speaker 1: of kind of two philosophies, you might say, when it
Speaker 1: comes to keeping classic cars in really good condition, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it just depends upon the condition and of the
Speaker 1: car when you take possession of it. So there's restoration,
Speaker 1: and restoration is exactly what sounds like. You are replacing
Speaker 1: original parts in the car with new parts. Those parts
Speaker 1: maybe brand new as a new machine them so that
Speaker 1: they will fit into the classic car and whatever capacity
Speaker 1: it was meant to. Or it may be something that
Speaker 1: you salvage from another car of that same make and
Speaker 1: model and you've taken it off one and put it
Speaker 1: onto another because of some defect or or damage that
Speaker 1: was done to the car in question. But this leads
Speaker 1: to a kind of philosophical problem, doesn't because you may
Speaker 1: have encountered this in a philosophy class. So if my
Speaker 1: uncle gives me an act of magnificent power as a gift,
Speaker 1: which we have not had in this studio for a
Speaker 1: long time, right, But I want to preserve this act
Speaker 1: of magnificent power. Except the problem is, uh, the handle
Speaker 1: gets damaged, so then I have to replace the handle,
Speaker 1: and then a little bit later the axe head. It's
Speaker 1: damaged and I have to replace the axe head. Is
Speaker 1: it still the same acts of magnificent power if all
Speaker 1: the pieces of it are not the original pieces? Right?
Speaker 1: This is the ship of Theseus paradox, where the idea
Speaker 1: being if you had a ship, and throughout the lifetime
Speaker 1: of that ship, at some point or another you had
Speaker 1: replaced every single element on that ship at least once,
Speaker 1: would it truly still be the same ship? Would it?
Speaker 1: Would there be the spirit of spirit or a car
Speaker 1: or so? Yeah? I think of this instead. It's a buick,
Speaker 1: all right, So you've got a buick theseus. The Theseus
Speaker 1: is buick. There's a sweet ride. Let me tell you,
Speaker 1: but at some point or another, you have replaced every
Speaker 1: single part of that buick. Could it truly be the
Speaker 1: same car? And there's some in the in the classic
Speaker 1: car collector circle who would say no, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that the restoration is bad, or that it's not a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing, or that it doesn't work well right. It
Speaker 1: could be all of those things. It could be gorgeous,
Speaker 1: it could be it could work like a dream. It
Speaker 1: could just be an amazing example of a restored vehicle.
Speaker 1: But there are competitions where people will bring cars in
Speaker 1: to be considered for awards, and some of them are
Speaker 1: restoration competitions where it's perfectly fine to bring a vehicle
Speaker 1: in that's been restored, and others are preservation competitions. The
Speaker 1: idea being that you have UH used conservation and preservation
Speaker 1: techniques to keep a car in its original form, not
Speaker 1: replacing anything usually major. You might have replaced little things
Speaker 1: like tires or something, but try to keep as many
Speaker 1: of the original parts intact as possible, UH, including things
Speaker 1: like the paint and the chrome. The idea being preserving
Speaker 1: as much of it as you possibly can. I was
Speaker 1: reading a story about a guy who had a car,
Speaker 1: and he said, the funny thing is I've replaced some parts,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't enter it into the preservation uh competitions
Speaker 1: because there are too many parts that have been replaced,
Speaker 1: but I haven't replaced enough parts, so I couldn't put
Speaker 1: it into the restoration competitions either. It's a really awesome
Speaker 1: looking car, but it doesn't fit in either category. And
Speaker 1: then Scott pointed out that there's also another version, and
Speaker 1: this is interesting because it goes beyond preservation. It's the restore.
Speaker 1: Restore mods are what they're called modified restored vehicles. So
Speaker 1: this is where you would take an old vehicle, you
Speaker 1: would restore it and you might replace uh something with
Speaker 1: some you know, modern amenities, like a modern engine in
Speaker 1: a in a classic nineteen thirties vehicle, so that it
Speaker 1: can suddenly go a lot faster, or it's much more
Speaker 1: efficient with fuel or whatever, or or I don't know,
Speaker 1: you put in a modern sound system, or you put
Speaker 1: on giant devil horns. Right, yeah, you could just have
Speaker 1: like the various spouts that shoot up flank, or if
Speaker 1: you just put on modern truck nuts. What if you
Speaker 1: and stall a series of massive speakers and a guy
Speaker 1: stands in front of your vehicle and plays guitar with
Speaker 1: flame shooting out the end of the entire time. I
Speaker 1: want that doufwagon. So yeah, I mean we're big do fans,
Speaker 1: all right. So if you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: car preservation as well as just all sorts of car
Speaker 1: related topics, definitely check out car Stuff because Scott really,
Speaker 1: I mean, he knows that world inside and out and
Speaker 1: has a lot to say about this. And they cover
Speaker 1: all sorts of topics, including old classic car models and
Speaker 1: makes that aren't really you know, available these days. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got another one that's alright, more along the lines
Speaker 1: of the film preservation. How about audio? Sure, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean when it comes to audio preservation, actually there are
Speaker 1: some things that are exactly like film. Imagine all those
Speaker 1: radio broadcasts, some of which were recorded, you know, you
Speaker 1: want to be able to preserve those. There are lots
Speaker 1: that were never recorded. So those those radio broadcasts went
Speaker 1: out and that was it. Fortunately, the Jerky Boys will
Speaker 1: always be in historical memory. Thank Heaven for that. All right. So,
Speaker 1: the National Recording Preservation Foundation is an organization here in
Speaker 1: the United States dedicated to preserving sound specifically, and this
Speaker 1: is a quote from their site, America's Unparalleled Radio music
Speaker 1: and Recorded Sound Heritage end quote. Uh. Now, it's not
Speaker 1: just about keeping them safe, but also making them available
Speaker 1: for research, education, and the simple pleasure of listening to sound.
Speaker 1: So in other words, like like film, it wouldn't do
Speaker 1: you any good if you just threw it in a
Speaker 1: room and didn't allow anyone to ever go in there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you're right, this stuff would exist, but
Speaker 1: without anyone to look at it doesn't matter. Kind of
Speaker 1: like if we talk about the art that if we
Speaker 1: remove it from its its place, it could ruin that art,
Speaker 1: but no one can get to that place, does it
Speaker 1: ultimately mad? But at any rate there there's again, just
Speaker 1: like I was talking about with film, it's tricky to
Speaker 1: to preserve audio recordings for the same general reasons you
Speaker 1: have to worry about do you concentrate on protecting the
Speaker 1: physical media itself, so for example, tape or vinyl records
Speaker 1: or c d s or whatever it may be that
Speaker 1: the music was stored upon. Even if you do keep
Speaker 1: it in really good condition, you then also have to
Speaker 1: have the accompanying mechanical apparatus that plays it right, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the most perfectly preserved c d uh. Well, let's take
Speaker 1: for example, I don't know that the most perfectly preserved
Speaker 1: ZIP disk Okay, yeah, is it necessarily going to help
Speaker 1: you play your MP three's right? Yeah, even if you
Speaker 1: had like an entirely boss collection of music on there,
Speaker 1: if there's no no like device to plug into your
Speaker 1: computer so that you can access it, or the drivers
Speaker 1: necessary for your comp it or to be able to
Speaker 1: interact with that, there's a lot of stuff here right.
Speaker 1: Digitized music has similar issues. If you digitize stuff, then
Speaker 1: you have to think, well, sure, my, my various devices
Speaker 1: and computers can play this particular style of music file
Speaker 1: right now. But there's no reason to assume that this
Speaker 1: particular style, like this type of file will be the
Speaker 1: same forever. Like in in fifty years, it may be
Speaker 1: that no one uses this particular file type anymore. So
Speaker 1: that means you have to build in a plan what
Speaker 1: do we do to make sure that all this digital
Speaker 1: music can be preserved? Um? And that might mean transferring
Speaker 1: that file type to another file type repeatedly as things evolved. Also,
Speaker 1: all this music would be existing on some device or another.
Speaker 1: The digital music, it's not like it would just be
Speaker 1: ones and zeros in the air, so you have to
Speaker 1: worry about that too, Like what cool devices currently are
Speaker 1: storing them? And do you have backups? Do you have redundancy?
Speaker 1: Do you have a way of transferring it from to
Speaker 1: another machine when that machine has lived out as useful life?
Speaker 1: In these days, there's a fair amount of redundancy, And
Speaker 1: how most of these types of things are stored, Like
Speaker 1: there are a lot of copies out there usually, yes,
Speaker 1: especially for digital music. I mean, you know Pirate Bay alone.
Speaker 1: You know that brings up another thing where I think
Speaker 1: there are two very different ways of approaching the question,
Speaker 1: and that is books. Now, books is something that's going
Speaker 1: to be kind of like the issue I brought up
Speaker 1: with movies, where you know, is it could would you
Speaker 1: say it's preserved if it only exists in a VHS copy,
Speaker 1: Except it's going to be a little bit different because
Speaker 1: you can completely entirely preserve the essence of a work
Speaker 1: of literature without a physical form at all. Because the
Speaker 1: very idea of writing in text is I mean depending
Speaker 1: on like if as a original illustrations or something like that,
Speaker 1: but if it's dependence upon the appearance upon the page,
Speaker 1: but it's the because sponsor works of art as well. Yeah. Absolutely, So.
Speaker 1: The entire point of language is that it is encoding,
Speaker 1: and it's so the the content of work of literature.
Speaker 1: You can encode in language that should have the exact
Speaker 1: same value no matter where it's transferred, if you use
Speaker 1: the same sequence of code. So you know, the iliad
Speaker 1: in an ancient document should have the same literary value
Speaker 1: as the iliad on an e reader, but it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have exactly the same esthetic value. Because books and whatever
Speaker 1: type of medium you use for a work of literature,
Speaker 1: like a bound code X or a scroll or something
Speaker 1: like that, those things can be beautiful, aesthetically pleasing and
Speaker 1: worth preserving all on their own, as they give a
Speaker 1: blind poet. But go ahead, right, So I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess we should look at this at preserving works of
Speaker 1: literature in both forms like physical book as a sort
Speaker 1: of work of art on its own, and then also
Speaker 1: the text, which is a much easier proposition. I almost
Speaker 1: want to argue the easier part, but I'll get there.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the physical part first, the physical part.
Speaker 1: There's there's this great pamphlet really from Cornell University about
Speaker 1: how to preserve books and This was written specifically for
Speaker 1: people who have a home library and they're concerned about
Speaker 1: I want to keep these books in really good conditions.
Speaker 1: So what do professional libraries do you know, or you know,
Speaker 1: established libraries, whether the research or whatever, what did they
Speaker 1: do to make certain their books remain in great shape? Well?
Speaker 1: And the first steps are like all the other stuff
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, is is basically just controlling the
Speaker 1: temperature and humidity. Yeah, you want the relative humidity to
Speaker 1: be somewhere between thirty and you don't want there to
Speaker 1: be so much humidity. Don't don't read your precious books
Speaker 1: in the bathtub. Certainly don't read them in the shower.
Speaker 1: I've gone through so many copies of good Omens that way.
Speaker 1: That's not even a joke. I have read. I have
Speaker 1: read and ruined multiple copies of good omens in the bath.
Speaker 1: The bath, by the way, perfect place to read good omens. Um. So,
Speaker 1: you want between thirty and six humidity for the same
Speaker 1: reasons we talked about with the oil paintings. Too high humidity,
Speaker 1: mold can form too low, and then your pages can
Speaker 1: become brittle. Uh. You also want to dust the books
Speaker 1: regularly to help prevent mold from growing. Since dust can
Speaker 1: contain mold spores, Cornell recommends using a vacuum with a
Speaker 1: HEPA filtration system and brush attachment. Oh we've talked about that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Keep the room dark, um, if you want as little
Speaker 1: light if there as possible, whatever, especially when you're just
Speaker 1: storing the books. You want as a little light in
Speaker 1: there as possible. But you certainly don't want sunlight, and
Speaker 1: you want to cut down on the UV radiation for
Speaker 1: the same reasons we talked about with the oil painting. Now,
Speaker 1: do libraries tell you that you need to be quiet
Speaker 1: because sound damages the books? No, they tell you to
Speaker 1: be quiet because people are trying to read. What what
Speaker 1: kind of library are you talking about? Well, you gotta
Speaker 1: remember I went to libraries shortly after the invention of
Speaker 1: the written word. So don't store leather books next to
Speaker 1: cloth or paper books. That's what Cornell suggests, because if
Speaker 1: they are stored next to each other, the dyes in
Speaker 1: the leather can bleed out and end up staining the
Speaker 1: books on either side of it. Uh. You shouldn't have
Speaker 1: your books packed into tightly on a shelf. They can
Speaker 1: be snug, but not so tight so that they're scrunching
Speaker 1: the spines, glue or the sewing it's contained. Also, if
Speaker 1: you store your books so that the so the covers
Speaker 1: of like sizes are next to each other, that will
Speaker 1: provide the most structural support for each cover. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: if it's a particularly large book, then obviously you want
Speaker 1: to uh to store it on its flat side. Um.
Speaker 1: But as long as you want the shelf to be
Speaker 1: deep enough so it completely covers the book. One of
Speaker 1: the important things about shelves they want they say, you know,
Speaker 1: you want to push your books back as far I
Speaker 1: guess the shelf as you can, so that there's overhang
Speaker 1: that protects the books in case of any leaks of
Speaker 1: water or anything the shelf, as well as from dust.
Speaker 1: But you want to keep them three inches away from
Speaker 1: the wall. You want to be protected from the wall
Speaker 1: in case anything goes wrong. They're um, like fire or
Speaker 1: or leaks. Um. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons for
Speaker 1: for the like they're really particular. They also say, don't
Speaker 1: storm in cabinets because there's no airflow in cabinets. You
Speaker 1: want there to be some airflow for your books. And uh,
Speaker 1: I was looking into like, how are these books being
Speaker 1: preserved officially, not just in people's homes. Like you know,
Speaker 1: these are great tips if you want to preserve some
Speaker 1: books for future generations. But I thought, well, I've always
Speaker 1: heard about the Library of Congress and about them bringing
Speaker 1: in books and adding them to the permanent collection. But
Speaker 1: I have no idea how that works. It's not just books,
Speaker 1: you know, They everything, film, music, all the sort of
Speaker 1: stuff can enter into the Library of Congress. Uh So
Speaker 1: I looked into it, and they get twelve thous and
Speaker 1: items per working day submitted to them from various libraries
Speaker 1: and collections. So obviously that can't just be every piece
Speaker 1: of content that people produce, one hopes not. You know,
Speaker 1: this is where we start getting a little snooty, or
Speaker 1: at least you have to if you're talking about preservation,
Speaker 1: because ultimately, you know, before we had talked about how
Speaker 1: people had not thought of the stuff they made as
Speaker 1: being particularly worthy of preservation, or it just didn't even
Speaker 1: enter into their thoughts. It wasn't even a consideration. Now
Speaker 1: we're getting to the opposite side, where, all right, we
Speaker 1: want to preserve stuff. What is worthy of preservation? My
Speaker 1: series of self published robot erotic novels are probably not
Speaker 1: going to make it in there. You never know until
Speaker 1: you ask Joe. Yeah, maybe if you change the name
Speaker 1: UH and then market it as a brand new piece
Speaker 1: of work, it can end up becoming a big hit
Speaker 1: movie at any rate. The UH, the these these submissions
Speaker 1: are reviewed by selection officers, and the selection officers are
Speaker 1: the ones who determine which ones are which of the
Speaker 1: submissions are added to the permanent collection, and which ones
Speaker 1: are not. So there actually is a curation process um
Speaker 1: as for protecting the text. And you had mentioned that
Speaker 1: you thought it was easier to protect the text than
Speaker 1: the physical thing. I don't necessarily believe that's true. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: One thing I would think there is that if you
Speaker 1: have people who for some reason would like to make
Speaker 1: changes to a text for I don't know, ideological reasons
Speaker 1: or whatever like, you can certainly see that happening. Well,
Speaker 1: and not even not even ideological, Let's just say that
Speaker 1: there's an argument among scholars about the translation of a
Speaker 1: particular text from an ancient language there's a dead language
Speaker 1: to a modern language, and and that can end up
Speaker 1: becoming an issue. So one of the things I would
Speaker 1: think is that you know, the conversion of text from
Speaker 1: the written word into the digital format if you are
Speaker 1: updating it as well to translate it. Anytime are doing
Speaker 1: any sort of translation or interpretation, obviously you're going to
Speaker 1: be impacting that the spirit of whatever is behind that text.
Speaker 1: It's it's much much easier now, I would say, because
Speaker 1: I mean, it used to be that we couldn't just
Speaker 1: make a copy of a written text that would be
Speaker 1: exactly the same every time. It used to be that
Speaker 1: if you wanted a copy of a book, you'd have
Speaker 1: to have it copied by hand, which meant that there
Speaker 1: would almost definitely be errors introduced through the copying process.
Speaker 1: Now we have pretty much a hundred fidelity and copying.
Speaker 1: But there might be questions about right, but like yeah,
Speaker 1: the stage you're talking about, there can be changes, like
Speaker 1: if people are talking about translations or you know, arguments
Speaker 1: about what's more likely the original text maybe because of
Speaker 1: exactly this problem I just talked about. Well, it's also
Speaker 1: interesting that according to the Rand Corporation, which is UH,
Speaker 1: they've they've published a work called Addressing the Uncertain Future
Speaker 1: of Preserving the Past. This was a paper that was
Speaker 1: published in two thousand seven. UH. They addressed a lot
Speaker 1: of concerns about preservation UH, specifically the conversion of text
Speaker 1: into digital formats and the preservation of digital text in general,
Speaker 1: and they said it was important but not easy to
Speaker 1: preserve that data. They actually said that digital preservation doesn't
Speaker 1: preserve the work in its original form, So it could
Speaker 1: be that the original form is in some way intrinsically
Speaker 1: important to that work. That's the case of some works,
Speaker 1: not necessarily all of them, you could argue, at least uh.
Speaker 1: They also said that as the medium evolves, the digital
Speaker 1: format medium evolves, and digital storage evolves, you introduced the
Speaker 1: possibility that information could be corrupted as you transfer it
Speaker 1: from one format to another if it's completely uh incompatible
Speaker 1: for whatever reason um or as the report says that
Speaker 1: uh they're repeated, conversion leads to the inevitable cumulative corruption
Speaker 1: and degradation of each digital object as it is force
Speaker 1: fit into the procustan bed of each successive digital format,
Speaker 1: which we saw, for example, in the excellent film Multiplicity. Yes,
Speaker 1: perfect example. So in case you weren't able to parse
Speaker 1: that sentence. Essentially, what they're saying is that each file
Speaker 1: format tends to have very specific rules that you have
Speaker 1: to follow in order to use that file format, and
Speaker 1: it could be that moving from one format to the
Speaker 1: next evolutionary format, there are rules that are come into
Speaker 1: conflict and that could corrupt a text in some way
Speaker 1: or another, in ways that we can't necessarily anticipate right now.
Speaker 1: So they said that, you know, digital is great, but
Speaker 1: it's not flawless, and we have to remember it's not flawless,
Speaker 1: because that way we can perhaps anticipate and prevent these
Speaker 1: problems from happening, or at least compensate for them when
Speaker 1: they do. Yes, And this kind of leads us into
Speaker 1: the last section, which is very similar. In fact, I
Speaker 1: won't spend too much time because it repeats so much
Speaker 1: of the information we've already said. But software and computer
Speaker 1: files and even computer hardware because in some cases the
Speaker 1: programs that we've used are hard coded onto circuit boards.
Speaker 1: We before we started recording the show, we were talking
Speaker 1: about video games and things like the old Atari games
Speaker 1: were hard coded onto cartridges, so that software and hardware
Speaker 1: is all in one form. It's in fact, there is
Speaker 1: no software, it's just hardware. Uh. The Atari machine had
Speaker 1: the capability of reading that and translating that into a
Speaker 1: game that you played on your television. Um, So, digital
Speaker 1: obsolescence is really what we're talking about here, and that's
Speaker 1: a real problem. Moore's law is fantastic because it means
Speaker 1: that we're getting more and more powerful machines every couple
Speaker 1: of years, but it's also terrible because it means that
Speaker 1: older machines go obsolete very quickly, or relatively quickly at least,
Speaker 1: and software that's designed for those old machines may not
Speaker 1: run on our new machines, at least not without some
Speaker 1: sort of emulator. So we end up losing stuff that
Speaker 1: was created and may still have value because our current
Speaker 1: equipment is in a way too good to run the
Speaker 1: old stuff. Especially. I can see this being a problem
Speaker 1: if there is not a sort of chain of continuity
Speaker 1: of interest in this thing. Where I feel pretty confident
Speaker 1: about programs that people are always going to want to
Speaker 1: be revisiting, But what about something that people used in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four and then forgot about and nobody wanted
Speaker 1: to look back into it until this year. Well, and
Speaker 1: some of that's gonna just be lost. Yeah yeah, But
Speaker 1: for that very reason, I would argue that part of
Speaker 1: the reason why we're seeing this kind of attention on
Speaker 1: this area is because the people who grew up with
Speaker 1: those machines are now adults and they are thinking back
Speaker 1: to the stuff that they used as kids, and there's
Speaker 1: a concern of, well, look how much of this we
Speaker 1: no longer really have access to. Let's protect what's there
Speaker 1: and make sure we preserve it and allow future generations
Speaker 1: to have access to it. So when my great grandchild
Speaker 1: wants to know how crappy ET the Extraterrestrial Game wasn't there,
Speaker 1: he or she can experience that. Do you think we'll
Speaker 1: ever reach a time when all of the copies people
Speaker 1: had will be lost and then we'll be so sorry
Speaker 1: we buried all those copies in the desert, because that
Speaker 1: would those copies were the ones we should have had
Speaker 1: for archiving purpose. We did dig those back up. Most
Speaker 1: of them don't work anymore, but it's still in perfect condition. No,
Speaker 1: they've got a little wear and tear on them. Would say, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a funny coincidence that they had to come up
Speaker 1: out of a hole, because isn't that basically the only
Speaker 1: thing you do in the ET games you fall into holes.
Speaker 1: That is an accurate representation of the majority of the gameplay.
Speaker 1: Actually just a twenty year marketing stunt for for the
Speaker 1: style of game, there was the same guys, one day,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a documentary about all the games we're
Speaker 1: going to make next month being buried in a pit.
Speaker 1: But in order for that to happen, we want to
Speaker 1: build in that pit gameplay element into the game. So
Speaker 1: it just looks like we're incredibly prescient Eggs. So one
Speaker 1: of the things I looked into was the International Federation
Speaker 1: of Data Organizations. There is such a thing that has
Speaker 1: identified three main areas that we should focus on to
Speaker 1: preserve data, and they identify them as organizational infrastructure. This
Speaker 1: is all the the people and the policies and the
Speaker 1: procedures that you put in place in order to UH
Speaker 1: preserve information digital information, technological concerns. This would be all
Speaker 1: the equipment and software that you would need in order
Speaker 1: to access the information and data curation, which is all
Speaker 1: about managing the data through its life cycle of interest
Speaker 1: and usefulness and also finding ways to transfer the data
Speaker 1: from one form to another if necessary. These are the
Speaker 1: three areas that have to be focused on if you
Speaker 1: wish to preserve UH digital information. Well, I know from
Speaker 1: experience that the cloud storage is not necessarily the best
Speaker 1: way to keep safe. You're unpublished robot erotic novels. You
Speaker 1: don't want hackers reading them before they come to market. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, there's there's really it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not a literal cloud of information that's that's hovering somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's someone else's computer. Cloud means somebody else's computer exactly. Yeah. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: while while we think of it as, oh, we can
Speaker 1: access this stuff wherever we go, Like if I if
Speaker 1: I store a document on cloud storage service, and the
Speaker 1: big advantage is that no matter where I go, I
Speaker 1: can log into that service and get a copy of
Speaker 1: that document. It's fantastic. It doesn't have to live on
Speaker 1: my computer, but it is living on someone's computer. It's
Speaker 1: living on multiple computers. If it's a good cloud service
Speaker 1: because of redundancy, if something happens to that one machine,
Speaker 1: and all the data that's on that machine would be
Speaker 1: preserved because it exists on multiple other machines as well
Speaker 1: as all most cloud storage works is that if you
Speaker 1: didn't have redundancy, you wouldn't have customers for very long
Speaker 1: because the first time something goes wrong, you would lose
Speaker 1: customer data. Um but because it does exist on someone's machines,
Speaker 1: that does mean that eventually that machine is going to
Speaker 1: get reached the end of its useful life. The information
Speaker 1: needs to be transferred. It could also mean that the entity,
Speaker 1: the one that's providing the cloud service, could go out
Speaker 1: of business for one reason or another, then what happens
Speaker 1: to the data? There are also other questions as well,
Speaker 1: like who owns the data? Right that. That's been one
Speaker 1: of those questions that has still unresolved, the idea if
Speaker 1: I store something on cloud service, do I still retain
Speaker 1: ownership of it? Does the person whose computer it lives
Speaker 1: upon own it? To what extent? Do they own it?
Speaker 1: You probably signed a contract saying they do on in
Speaker 1: terms of service, and you click that little button without
Speaker 1: reading it. Uh yeah, So it's it's complicated and it's
Speaker 1: not a guarantee. Right Like if if I sit there
Speaker 1: and think, oh, I love Facebook, because all those pictures
Speaker 1: are saved forever on Facebook, I don't have to store
Speaker 1: them on my computer, I don't have to print them
Speaker 1: out and put them in books. I don't have to
Speaker 1: have them on thumb drives that are unlabeled, and I'll
Speaker 1: never figure out which one has what I can just
Speaker 1: keep them on Facebook. What if Facebook goes out of business.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's unlikely due to how it how
Speaker 1: it's standing right now in the tech world. But we
Speaker 1: thought the same thing about my Space. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and that definitely has changed significantly. Well, or things can
Speaker 1: change hands like I think I felt that way about
Speaker 1: live journal back in the day, and and that has
Speaker 1: certainly changed. Yes, so cloud storage is not necessarily a guarantee.
Speaker 1: I think ultimately the message we are giving is that
Speaker 1: preservation is something that is non trivial. It requires a
Speaker 1: lot of work, and uh, we still think that that
Speaker 1: work is valuable that that it's it's a good thing
Speaker 1: to preserve this stuff that we're creating. It's good for
Speaker 1: us to be able to keep something in some level
Speaker 1: of permanence, especially in a world where we are treating
Speaker 1: our day to day existence more and more as if
Speaker 1: it were disposable, and there's so much stuff that we
Speaker 1: buy and then within a couple of years we toss
Speaker 1: it and buy something new. Uh, it's it's nice for
Speaker 1: us to concentrate on things that are worthy of preservation. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it was really interesting to look into this and of course,
Speaker 1: it's such a huge topic and we covered a slice.
Speaker 1: There's so many other things we can talk about. In fact,
Speaker 1: we could go into much deeper detail on any of
Speaker 1: the ones we've covered today, and that makes me curious.
Speaker 1: If you guys out there there's something specific you would
Speaker 1: like to hear more about, or there's another topic about
Speaker 1: what will X be like in the future, let us know.
Speaker 1: Send us a message the email addresses f W thinking
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a
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Speaker 1: leave us a message and we will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this topic in the
Speaker 1: future of technology, I visit forward Thinking dot com, brought
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