I have frequently commented on the importance of putting digital material in a range
of places and forms on the web to ensure that one's digital presence is
pervasive and enduring. I use the term diversity to describe this activity. I
also note below that by producing a diverse range of material you may also
increase the chances that people, who live in the future, will be interested in
exploring your material. Below I will outline some of the types and levels of diversity to consider as you build a digital presence.
Location of your material.
- local hard drive, external hard drive, flash drive
- locate within machine, offsite, backups, long term backups, secure locations,
multiple copies - internet: web sites, email etc
- do not rely on one internet site - use multiple sites
- internet based storage: not one system, again use many for all type of media.
Sites will not necessarily last forever. Larger sites that cease to exist may
have data transferred but you may not be able to access it without changing some
part of your system (ie new password for new site) - email to self can be an archive
- do not locate password/ access information at one location - or to only
one or two people
Use full range of options for putting material into the web (including
comment about file formats for types of material).
- Photos. Use most common formats for photos. If millions of people are
using the same format the chance that there will be ways to extract a photo
from a file, in the future, is more likely. - Video. Formats for video are changing far more than for regular photos.
This means it is important to try and keep up with latest options, and if
necessary to update video files from older formats to new formats. - Audio. File formats are fairly stable and likely to remain so in the
foreseeable future. - Text. ASCII text is the most stable. I would recommend not using
proprietary formats such as required by Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF files and
so on. Converting everything to HTML is reasonably safe while the web
remains in its current form. - Other. Documents such as power point, spreadsheets may or may not be
readable in the future. Converting to HTML, or XML may future proof them to
some extent.
There are a large number of ways material can be placed on the web. I call
this the form of the material or record. It is important to use as
many of these forms (and more) as possible. Some of the possible forms that are
currently available are:
- Material is produced as part of day to day activity and was not intended
to be future archived material. This would include emails, messaging, some
tweets and so on. Often this material would have to be specifically located
and placed in a web location to be accessible to the public. - Material produced as part of day to day activity that is semi, or fully
publicly accessible. This might include social networking postings, Tweets
and so on. Not only will the material be archived, but often action around
the activity will be recorded. - Material intended for a public audience. This would include "own"
websites, YouTube videos, blogs, comments about blogs and articles and so
on. This material will often be archived and available for anyone to access
- Material recorded as part of non computer activity, then archived.
This could include day to day videoing of activities, scanning documents,
audio recordings of an interaction, photos of events, gps logs and so on. A
term for this is lifeblogging. - Material can be produced to deliberately record thoughts and activities
about current or past events (or even future?). The purpose of this activity
may be to primarily promote a presence on the web. While a large amount of
passive data will indicate what you have done it will not necessarily show
why or what you thought about the activity or situation. - Increasingly, the forms of material are blurring. Data from a series of
tweets may be extracted and used to indicate how you were feeling when you
produced the tweets. A blog that states why you did something will be
archived as a blog statement along with other blog statements.
Range of material
It is important to use the various forms of digital options available in a
range of ways. By range I mean the number of different ways you can use
video, photos, text, audio to "present" yourself on the web. For example:
- Be creative with video. Do self-videoing, but vary the background, time
of day, ask your self questions, talk directly, move around and so on. Do
interviews with other people, video the world around you and comment. Use 2D
and 3D video. - In a similar manner be creative with audio. What does your current world
sound like? Respond to questions you think people might like to a ask you.
- Take photos with a purpose, use old photos that you have scanned
creatively. Provide audio comment on your photos. Include them in video
sequences. - Develop your own web site and use web pages to link things together.
Blog about your life and link to your web page. - Look at what other people are doing and shape their ideas into your own
way of presenting yourself and the world around you.
- types of digital options to record your "data sets" will increase the
likelihood that records will survive over a long period of time. Some
sections may be lost, but others will remain; as other people pick up on
your links they will build them into their links and you presence will
expand and become more enduring. On the other hand, if all your digital
material is located in one server, then the "loss" of access to that server
will result in an almost total loss of your digital presence. - In the future, I believe, software will seek out your various web based
"data sets" and construct a "picture" of you based on the material it finds,
with regard to the query or question it has been asked to check out. The
more diverse the type, form and range of material available, the richer and
more interesting the picture will be. - As these pictures are developed they will contribute to additional data
about you on the web. Subsequent querys may also use these data making the
results even more interesting. - Over the next few hundred years new generations will have an increasing
number of ancestors they will be able to "check out". Why would they not
target the most interesting and diverse?