The current trend of our society, keeping records digitally, has increased the loss of modern physical media. If we were to lose access to the internet, future historians would be facing a massive blank spot in the history of our time.
The modern era is generally accepted as the best-documented era in history, but is that really true? Physical media of this time is rarely created, and when it is created, its preservation is often not a priority. This has helped our society gain access to information through digital sources.
The internet requires a lot of resources to function, and in the case of any cataclysmic event or even just an energy shortage, there is the possibility that we will lose access to the internet. If this were to happen, our digital records would disappear entirely and be inaccessible to future generations.
The only reason we can know so much about the past is because of physical records. These physical records were not always purposefully preserved, but were recovered in a relatively good state after the society that created them had ceased to exist. For this to occur, there needs to be a large amount of physical sources so that we can hope some are naturally preserved into the future.
This is especially the case when it comes to recovering histories of common people, since typical historical practice of the past would not have seen the value of spending resources to preserve those kinds of documents.
With the current state of each of our personal records, this process would be nearly impossible for historians of the future. Very few people keep physical records of their day-to-day lives, which include physical versions of pictures and writings.
Instead, we tend to keep those records online. If something were to happen to the digital places where these sources are stored, they would be lost forever with no hope of surviving the elements and being recovered.
We already see people facing these issues with their own personal history. Losing access to photos taken on old devices is a common issue to the point where most people only have records of their photographic lives after they started using resources like iCloud to store their images.
Most people don’t have a comprehensive understanding of iCloud and the fact that their personal data can be lost or deleted due to a lack of space. This is similar among most online storage providers. Pictures can be lost long before anyone notices they are gone.
For this reason, archives are cautious about the idea of digital archives. Most archives have digitized some of their resources, but this is more for access instead of an alternative form of storage. The digitized materials are still preserved in their physical forms within archives. Many people digitizing old pictures, videos or writings don’t take the same precautions. It’s common for a photo album to be discarded after a family’s images are online.
The digital age is currently seen as the best-documented time period; there may be a time in the future where this period is an empty space in history. News and photos being moved to almost entirely digital mediums of storage removes the possibility of recovery after an event that makes the internet impossible to access.
