Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Web Heritage Could Be Lost

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the anyone-else-remember-sean-baby dept.

Squiff writes "The British Library warns us that 'The UK's online heritage could be lost forever if the government does not grant a "right to archive"' in the UK. Never mind the Wayback Machine, The British Library declares that 'the average life expectancy of a website was just 44 to 75 days, and suggested that at least 10% of all UK websites were either lost or replaced by new material every six months,' with the material within them being amongst the most revealing regarding the state of contemporary culture."

3 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sadness by Anonymusing · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sadly, no, we actually did code animated ASCII by hand for display on terminals (or terminal windows). It was awful... especially at 300 baud, though even at 1200.

    --
    Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
  2. Re:why? by rubycodez · · Score: 2, Informative

    history is always distorted and often fabricated, and the ramblings of millions of manipulated ignoramuses won't help the matter

  3. Re:Sadness by BrokenHalo · · Score: 2, Informative

    but really, there wasn't much information on the Web that was useful for non-scientists back then

    Actually, that's only partly true. Project Gutenberg had a head-start (I think from 1971) on the internet. That and lots of other material was available via UUCP and various BBS sites.