https://computerhistory.org/blog/a-backup-of-historical-proportions/
"“Is my phone really backed up in the Cloud?” “When was the last time I backed
up my laptop?” “Is it true that I need a local backup of my Google Drive?!” “Oh
dear, I forgot my password!” Now that we have interwoven computers so deeply
into our daily lives, an ancient anxiety has become a fiercer everyday
companion for us. For centuries we have worried “Are my most precious records
okay?” In the past, we calmed this anxiety using a variety of technologies:
safety deposit boxes, shoe boxes, photo albums, photocopies, scriptoria,
institutional archives, and more. In a world of digital computing, we are all
too aware of the fragility of record keeping. In some ways, our ancient anxiety
has expanded.
Computing professionals have been living with this digital flavor of archival
anxiety for longer than the rest of us. From the very beginning, the fluidity
and fungibility of digital information came with fragility. Making matters
worse, many of the means for holding and storing digital information were less
reliable and much harder to work with than today’s. As a result, computing
professionals met their anxiety about—and real challenges of—digital fragility
with a new discipline: They started to make purposeful copies. They began to
back things up."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
