As internet users, we are consuming content every day and producing content at the same time, do you know how much data the Internet generates every day?
According to cloud data processing company Domo, the amount of data generated per day in 2020 will reach about 1.145 trillion MB, and if you store all this data with hard disks, you can fill more than one million 1TB hard disks every day.
The Internet is like an unfathomable ocean, with new "tides" pouring in every day, but what few people notice is that internet data is not much slower than that.
The collapse of a blog site, the failure of a server vendor, or a malicious hack can lead to the complete disappearance of some Internet data in the world, which may include photos of precious memories, key documents that record history, and as the original data disappears, these will be permanently forgotten by human beings.
To preserve this character-made civilization as much as possible, a nonprofit digital library in the United States called the Internet Archive collects a large collection of web pages, videos, audios, software, and e-books.
Since 1996, the Internet Archive has used web crawlers to crawl and archive a large number of web pages, and has now exceeded 351 billion web pages, known as the Wayback Machine project.
The page of "Time Machine" is very concise, with only an input field and a search button, a bit like search engines such as Google. Enter the website you want to "go back in time" in the input field, select the date you want to travel, and you can see the screenshots of the web pages that were saved that day.
▲ No for meals on November 2, 2007
Even for websites that have long ceased to exist due to poor management and other reasons, you have a good chance of finding a historical backup in the "time machine", which is one of the ideas of the Internet Archive: to protect the fragile Internet information.
2021 marks the 25th anniversary of the birth of the Internet Archives, which have recorded nearly a quarter of a century of Internet history, and in order to commemorate this special node, the Internet Archives have made some "transformations" of their time machines, this time not only want to record history, but also take you "back to the future".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="11" will the Internet be good in 2046 >? </h1>
The Internet Archive's new project, called Wayforward Machine, is also a time machine, but its role is to take you through the future, in 2046.
The "Future Time Machine" page retains the simple style of "Time Machine", and the Matrix-like black and green color scheme adds a little futuristic sense of tech geeks to it.
Enter the URL in the middle address bar, you can see it in advance in 2046, with a little nervousness and excitement, I typed down the www.Apple.com to see if the iPhone 38 uses the 65W fast charge.
After patiently waiting, the 25-year jump was finally completed, but the first thing that came into my eyes was not the familiar black-and-white logo, but a serious "warning" that required me to submit my personal information to browse.
After following the guide to fill in a series of personal information such as name, address, mobile phone number, age, gender, etc., I still could not enter the website to view iPhone 38, and things became strange: the information requested by the website became more and more private, from zip code to my weight, height and other physiological information, and how to fill in.
I tried to browse the Nintendo website in 2046 to see if the new Switch used a 4K mini LED screen, and sure enough, it was blocked.
The website prompted me to complete biometric authentication, and "humanely" provided both retina and fingerprint authentication.
Even more "excessively" is that if I agree to authentication, I will tacitly accept advertisers to deliver personalized ads based on my biometric data.
Of course, none of this is real, and the Future Time Machine doesn't scan your biometric information, doesn't record your private data, and doesn't really simulate the 2046 web page, which is a performance art prank planned by the Internet Archives.
No matter what URL you enter in the "Future Time Machine", it will block you with various pop-up windows, and these "network obstacles" are actually what the Internet Archives believes to be the future of the Internet.
When you want to go to a music website in 2046 to find "Cultivating Love" as a child, you may find that the website was shut down as early as 2029, and the stories that recorded hundreds of thousands of people's late-night sentimental reviews disappeared with it.
Or when you go to some blogging site to look up information, you may encounter the site owner blocking public viewing and extending the copyright protection of their content for 200 years.
The Internet Archives' vision of the Internet in 2046 is dystopian, and some of the speculations are inevitably too bold and radical, but it is an indisputable fact that the Internet is slowly moving from "free" and "open" to closed.
▲ Image courtesy of The Atlantic
Bad chain problems are an important reason for information closure. In June, the Atlantic published an article titled "The Internet is rotting," in which author Jonathan Zittrain and colleagues have done a series of studies on web link failures since 2014.
In the case of the authoritative academic journal Harvard Law Review, 75% of its citation links have long since expired, which means that if the bad chain problem continues to develop, people will encounter a total collapse of the chain of custody in the near future - no one can tell the truth of the facts, because no one knows the truth.
In addition, the increasing number of personal data censorship and the release of regulations have also made Internet archives pessimistic about the future of the Internet.
To that end, it predicts timelines of big events that will happen to the Internet over the next 25 years, such as a tough digital rights bill to crack down on free knowledge in 2024, the merger of three of the world's largest publishers in 2034 to monopolize digital media, and the forced entry of internet archives into underground activities in 2046.
Its "Time Machine" project will be terminated as early as 2025, and in fact, the Internet Archive has now received lawsuits from four publishers.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" > meticulously document history and share knowledge, and are fighting against the future</h1>
With the Time Machine, you can find many interesting and meaningful things.
For example, you can witness how Apple's official website has changed from "ugly duckling" to "white swan" step by step.
It chronicles not only the design of websites, but also the changes of an era, but internet archives are facing opposition from more and more publishers because of their free access to digital content.
The Internet Archive is not alone in its quest for knowledge openness, and another controversial knowledge site, Sci-Hub, celebrated its tenth anniversary this year.
Sci-Hub is an almost well-known but unspeakable secret in research circles: you can bypass the paywall here to download almost any scientific paper you want to see for free, with no need to register or subscribe.
The aim is to promote the openness and dissemination of knowledge, which is a violation from a commercial point of view.
▲ Image courtesy of Futurism
Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbagin was sued by academic publisher giant Elsevier in 2017 for $15 million in damages, a move that was not supported by researchers.
Some people say that Internet Archives, Sci-Hub, EEF and other websites are rebels in the copyright era, an outlier in the Internet world with abundant capital, and some people evaluate them as the last guardians of the Internet spark.
▲ Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle Image: The New York Times
No one knows when they will stop their confrontation against the legal red line, but their founders have all sent the same signal in different interviews: They will hold out until no one supports them.
Finally, some friends may wonder why the "Future Time Machine" chose 2046, was it influenced by director Wong Kar-wai?
In fact, this is only because by 2046, the Internet Archives had just recorded half a century of the Internet's history— if the Internet still existed.