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Treating the Web As an Archive
An anonymous reader sends a link to a blog post by David Eaves discussing how the ease of finding information on the web affects how we analyze history. "... nothing is different per se — the same old research methods will be used — but what if it is 10 times easier to do, 100 times faster and contains a million times the quantity of information? With the archives of newspapers, blogs and other websites readily available to be searched, the types of research once reserved for only the most diligent and patient might be more broadly accessible." As an example, he points to an almost 10-year-old article detailing the events surrounding the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which some believe was a significant contributing factor to the current financial crisis.
You can't believe everything you read on the internet.
History is now written by those who save it?
The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system.
Yep and no one forsaw this financial crisis, indeed.
Yes theres alot of information on the internet, its easy and fast to find it. But its also easy and fast to find a great deal of crap on the internet that isnt actually of any use to you. Filtering the wheat from the chaff can often take as much or more effort as finding the information in the first place. How many times have you had to re-word your search phrase, try several search results, and use ctrl-f to actually select the usefull information from all the extra crap.
I anticipate that treating the web as an archive will ultimately lead to a frustrating dungeon of page-not-found errors, expired domain names and pay-to-access newspaper web sites.
The web fails in so many ways.
1. It's to easy to rewrite history. Because articles are (generally) on one website they can be changed. This is unlike a newspaper archive where it would be costly to destroy all copies of the paper.
2. The web is biased. If aliens connect to the internet they would think all the human race ever does is porn and bashing MS (maybe not exactly that, but you get the idea)
3. The web becomes unreadable faster than paper archives. Protocol changes and what-not.
4. The web is too easy to control. A private company can censor the web via lawsuits.
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I'm tired
Trisexual Puppy must have some amazingly bad karma, but in this case he is right. The skill is in quantifying the value of information. For example, knowing that wikipedia is not a source, but a link to sources.
Hadn't read that this was just stolen from below. http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1219979&cid=27798421
I think Archive.org is a good online archive, but its actual mission is impossible: it would automatically require a doubling of the size of the interweb thingie.
So, combine that with the Memory Hole problem, and you have a precarious situation: not a good formula for notions of an archive, where consistency, completeneess, and reliability are paramount.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Moderators, mod houstonbofh down. He is trying to set up a karma ponzi scheme whereby he uses multiple user accounts to appear that the OP is a copy-paste troll. But this isn't true. Just check the timestamps.
MOD PARENT DOWN. MOD SEXUAL PUPPY UP.
If ALL publications were archived online to allow for searching through the web it would make comparative research so much easier. The trustworthyness of sources will be exactly the same as they are now, it's just at pesent you have to physically go to a library archive & scan through paper or microfische copies of the pages, this is time consuming & also has the potential that a researcher will miss information. Even if the immense amount of information (& the huge storage upgrade needed to hold it) contained in the past hundred years or so of print journalism becomes available online it's not so much the content as the search queries that are important. It's amazing how many people are unable to find things on the web even now because they are unable to build a decent search query.
The problem is that the vast majority of "information" on the Web is (a) hopelessly commercial, (b) non-objective chatter, or (c) actual misinformation. Have you tried to use Google lately to solve some specific technical problem or better understand a specific issue? Unless you are very skilled with search query syntax, the majority of hits on the first several pages are likely to be useless, irrelevant, or worse misleading.
Take for instance this search:
(specs OR specifications)
Now, you'd hope that would consistently get you only pages that detail the specifications of that system, right? It doesn't: what it will get you, primarily, is page after page of hits from commercial interests - parts suppliers - who I suspect have figured out that they can subvert this search simply by ensuring that the word "specifications" appears somewhere in all their item pages.
Searching for solutions to technical problems, OTOH, is likely to get you page after page of hits from forum discussion groups, where the majority of what you'll find is illiterate, off topic, and just downright wrong.
Now, maybe the much-hype Wolfram Alpha engine will make REAL information more accessible to people, but I doubt it... where's the commercial value in actually educating consumers? As the old cliche reminds us, "a fool (uneducated consumer) and his money are soon parted". There are a LOT of people who want to preserve that dynamic because they benefit from it.
The problem is that in all the world, at least 50 people have said almost everything at one time or another and their musings were captured in print and left to ripen on some internet site.
Pick any event and someone "foresaw" it. Both the way it happened, the opposite way and everything in between.
Once one knows the results, one can locate the seer who predicted it and all the steps between the prediction and the reality. It all seems so obvious.
Although in this case it seems reasonable to realize that taking all the checks and balances away from people who control trillions of dollars of money, combined with greed, will have a bad end result.
Don't post links like that on Slashdot, please.
Generic web searches mainly suck for finding anything comprehensive in printed/journalistic/academic/legal content. They are okay for 1st year/freshman initial searches and fact finding, but for anything serious, there's a reason why deep databases like LexisNexis and WestLaw exist.
Da Blog
If ALL publications were archived online to allow for searching through the web it would make comparative research so much easier.
This exists. It's called LexisNexis.
Da Blog
Yessiree.
Because Today's +1Informative mods STAY even after tomorrow's "retraction article" which says "disregard yestrerday, it was all made up by the source."
Blending content here AttemptingAWin, Rotten Tomatoes has a recap of Marvel movies. Look at the entry for Ghost Rider.
"...like Daredevil, Ghost Rider went down as a critical dud whose respectable performance at the box office was overshadowed by the beating it took from writers"
Really now!? So the public liked the movies, while certain pundits playing their own game were paid to kill the movie if they could?
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/xmen/news/1817540/total_recall_marvel_comics_movies_worst_to_best
We see the Wins from short-term stylings. We need something profound that really rewards longevity.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's great when high-quality information is available, but it can be very damaging when old information that is either untrue or taken out of context resurfaces.
Imagine if your best high school buddy blogged about your getting drunk in your sophomore year. You asked him to delete it and he did. Because you were minors, the police records of the event were also sealed.
Your buddy's blog got caught up in an archive and when you were 23 and running for local alderman it came up two days before the election. You didn't have time to show the voters this was a one-time thing, and consequently, lost your lead in the polls and the election.
An even worse scenario: Your buddy's blog entry could've been completely fabricated.
Back in the day when archiving information and using archives wasn't so easy, responsible archivists cherry-picked the information that was of lasting value. If they suspected the truth of the information, they either didn't use it or they tagged it as potentially untrue.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Robert Rubin was calling for reform of Glass-Stegall at least as early as 1995. Clinton People wanted the repeal as well and didn't just meander into it.
Monday, May 1 1995
"Rubin calls for modernization through reform of Glass-Steagall Act."
"Robert E. Rubin, secretary of the Treasury, recommended that Congress pass legislation to reform or repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 to modernize the country's financial system. In testimony before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Rubin said Clinton administration proposals, would permit affiliations between banks and other financial services companies, such as securities firms and insurance companies...
Rubin said Glass-Steagall imposed unnecessary costs and made providing financial services less efficient and more costly. He said the act can "conceivably impede safety and soundness by limiting revenue diversification."..
Rubin said bills introduced in the House and the Senate to modernize the financial services system were highly constructive, although somewhat different from the Clinton administration's recommendations, and that a bipartisan effort could yield significant results this year."
http://www.allbusiness.com/government/business-regulations/500983-1.html
Also from 1999 the Times ran an article about relaxed subprime mortgages that might become a problem in the future:
"Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending"
September 30, 1999
"In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.' "