Today we are talking a lot about the fact that the internet does not forget. About the right that personal data that is stored in systems needs to be deleted on request. So looking from that perspective it seems that nowadays the difficulty is that things are unchangeable and forever graved into the digital stone walls.
The reality is, that this is far from true if you measure it from a cultural and historic perspective. In order to preserve information, art or culture for the coming generations it requires special efforts to make sure that it survives. And not only this, it needs to persist without being altered.
Special efforts are required to preserve information for the future
Many countries do invest a lot of resources into special science programs to investigate how to achieve this. Or how to make sure that already long time ago stored data and cultural heritage can be preserved for the future.
What this tells us is that we require efforts by mankind to deliver information to our future generations. And in consequence this means that the “non forgetting” internet is also just a temporary stage in the development of mankind towards communication and information storage.
Preserving cultural heritage goes beyond using blockchain technology
Blockchain technology seems to be the state of the art technology in order to have a “more” persistent and unalterable information storage. But also blockchain technology relies on computers and servers. I think we all agree that we can not imagine that those might disappear in the near future. However, they will change. They will get more powerful and many things we thought are not possible today might be in the future… or I should say: They will be possible in the future.
For a company like 4ARTechnologies this means that we need to always use the technology at the time available to achieve our goal of preserving the cultural goods we protect. However, this can only be one element to head successfully towards such a bold target.
In order to make sure that information can survive time we need to also have people engaged to live this mission. As a company, we can do whatever we believe is the correct and best way towards such a goal. However, what’s in 200 years?
Our digital heritage needs tech and passionate people
Our solution is a foundation consisting of the major cultural players in the world. Only if you have a non-profit organization that’s only target is the preservation and accessibility of worthwhile cultural art data combined with the most recent technology of its members can we have a chance to allow our heritage to continue to be available hundreds of years from now. Only if you use tech and passionate people, we will have a chance to make our digital heritage available also for the unforeseeable future.
About the author:
???? Kai Zeh loves that at 4ART we can be creative ourselves, but also develop creative solutions for creative people.
His superpower is to adapt his digital competence and tactical knowledge to innovative projects, always thinking about how to make the client’s life easier.
Fun fact: “I have curly hair. I just don’t show it anymore.” ????
