But if a YouTube channel disappears, it’s gone to us.
Source: Dat Rats
I worry about this too, sometimes, because it would seem that we’ve created and destroyed more content on the Internet than the entire Greek civilization produced for us.
But other times, I’m ambivalent to the idea. Some of the most important ideas survive and move on to the next level or the next civilization and there’s always progress.
So while yeah, it would suck if these cool/weird/fun sites disappear, and if YouTube one day loses all content from a period of time. But how much would it be a loss for civilization? The ideas would have been absorbed by the people of the time and the most important ones move on with artists and consumers in different ways.
A loss for civilization? Well, yeah, if you put it that way—civilization
is going to roll on, regardless. I
suppose you could say my effort is misplaced: perhaps better to work on helping
our civilization survive, to live on, rather than trying to look to the past.
But, put another way: do I want to preserve a civilization that doesn’t embody
any of the ideas that I care about? You’re probably right with your last line
there—maybe I consider myself one who has ‘absorbed’ the ideas of my time and
wants to ‘move on’ with those ideas in different ways. I can probably do this
just fine without ready access to the source material—but I am glad that I was
able to show Dont Look Back (1967) to a friend recently, rather than needing
to just recount my recollection of it.
Definitely don’t want to save everything. Just some essential bits. And I
shouldn’t try to be noble about it—just seems fun.
(And hey—kind of you to write up your thoughts, NK.)
Agreed that it seems fun and thus, for fun, it’s worth pursuing 🙂