Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to Forward Thinking. Pay there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks in the future and says inside the museum's infinity goes up on trial. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is going to be part two of our two part episode about how to make It Last Forever, about the future of historical preservation and restoration, how to take the present and make it go the long haul. So if you haven't heard part one yet, you should go back and check out part one of this episode. We need to make a bunch of references to things we've already said. So you've I mean, I have faith in you guys. You're pretty quick on the uptake, you know, just just to head off any confusion. Sure, but without further ado, here is part due. It belongs in the museum. I hope that those that goes right into my rant about how they Okay, But let's run back to the past a little bit more. In fact, let's run farther back than we did with the idea of like an oil painting from the Renaissance. What about the condition of archaeological artifacts. Yeah, I want to pose the question, what's the future of stealing artifacts from other cultures and putting in them in your own museums? Okay, this is mostly a cheeky Indiana la Do you have an opinion? Is it Lauren's rant time? No? No, it's not. It's okay, Well, I mean to actually, actually a kind of is because the past hundred and fifty years or so have included a whole lot of rich white people falling so much in love with another culture that they went there, bought and or just took a bunch of their stuff, and then brought it back home for private or public display. Well, clearly because these rich white people realize that whatever indigenous population isn't going to take the efforts to preserve that art, they have to take it on themselves. Well, and it's not enriching anyone's culture if they just leave it there, but they can enrich the lives of other rich white people if they bring it back to theirs. But I completely agree with it. I am in fact now ranting. But you know so that that sucks. We we generally try not to do that anymore. And there are some digital steps that are being taken to bring artifacts to interested parties without ever having to remove the pieces. We've talked about museums and cultural centers use of virtual reality and and a lot of organizations like that are hosting as many of their or as much of their collections online as possible and in really high quality photographs for free. But see an image of a thing is not the same as seeing a thing, there's sure, and well, I mean, one thing you can just rely on these days, hopefully to have some exchange, Like if you want to see artifacts from somewhere on the other side of the world, is that plenty of museums today do exhibit exchanges, right, there will be a traveling exhibit where something from Egypt comes to your local museum. Oh sure. And that, actually, I think is really that kind of international cooperation is the real future of dealing with with artifacts and sharing that kind of information across cultures. And it really gives me the work fundies every tomb version. Right. But you know, unfortunately, even if you leave a thing where you found it, or even if you have constructed a very careful museum exhibit in which it can travel, public visitation presents lots of problems for artifacts because even if you're if you're a cautious tourist who's not going around like poking the oil paintings or climbing on the statues, flash photography, taking flash photography, you're doing things like like opening doors, or possessing a body temperature that's higher than the air around you, or or breathing. Uh, people are lousy with breath just all the time, and and all all of these things create fluctuations in the temperature and humidity, which we have talked about is being not good. So let me guess there's a technology that will prevent us from breathing. I actually can name quite a few. Yeah. No, humans have made a lot of technologies that prevent people from breathing in the long run. No, no, it's not there. But there is a project that is attempting to solve these problems by replicating the artwork, replicating specifically China's. And I'm probably gonna say this wrong. I'm really sorry, magol. I think it's how you say Mago caves. Uh, it looks like Mogau if you're if you're a dumb American, But I don't think that's how you say it. Anyway, it's a series of four hundred and nine two caves that were carved out of a cliff face in the Goulbi Desert and decorated by Buddhist monks and scholars and merchants from around three hundred to drede there. I don't have words to describe them that I can really say on air. They're they're, they're they're beautiful. They're really awesome. Um and that a local academy called the Don Huang Academy has teamed up with Los Angeles Getty Conservation Institute to painstakingly recreate three of these caves and and all of their painted walls and ceilings and all of their statuary and take them on international tours and exhibitions. One of these brooms has been touring around Asia for a while. They're going to hit the US for the first time in May of twenty six. And it's as though you put pyramid ceilings in like large two car garages and then covered them in an amazing artwork over the course of centuries. They're they're really beautiful. Well, yeah, I'm all in favor of that. I think that's really cool. Like, in fact, i've seen plenty of that already in in the more like a natural natural history kind of setting right right, Yeah, because dinosaur bones that you see in a museum are probably not made of dinosaur bones. They're they're probably a plastic print of a dinosaur or mold. I'm thinking of their St John's Castle in Limerick, Ireland. Um phenomenal if you are interested in medieval Renaissance history. It's a fantastic museum that also tries to recreate that experience of of not just you know, the castle at its height, but how it was built. And so they actually take advantage of the ruins to tell you how that section was created because you can see the cross sections. So so cool. A cool thing about uh presenting information in a way that is combining the original work with either a virtual representation or with uh with with replicas to get across the wonder without actually damaging that original work. Sure sure uh. And and like with paintings, there's some pretty high tech techniques that are that are being used to to study artifacts that have been worn down over time without damaging them any further. For example, some researchers out of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Missouri found that a scanning acoustic microscope can be used to reveal impressions and metal that have been worn invisible to the human eye. You know, for example, a smith's hallmark in in polished silver, or the design that was stamped into a coin. Uh, metal that has been worn smooth can still contain areas of compression and deformation where the stamps or the engravings were applied. And and so by taking these careful acoustic scans, you can really reveal the original patterns and and therefore, you know, you can let historians know when and where and how the piece was created. This is kind of like the zoom and enhance of archaeological world. Yeah, it's really I mean, I wouldn't have never thought this would have been possible. It's pretty incredible. Okay, So a lot of these things that we're discussing, though, are at least somewhat static in nature. Like they're there a thing that has, you know, at some level, been carved or printed, or or developed in the case of film, or painted, and it's supposed to stay the way it is. But what about things that are supposed to work? And I'm thinking, like a machine, what if we want to keep a machine that has working parts and moving bits. You know here, just machines are never art Now, I have a few terminator friends who would take offense at that statement, but I'll say that machines aren't artists. Those those artistic cyborgs are fine, right right, Um, they do not deal with bad reviews very well. No, no, no, no, you should never give your robot artists lasers. Mistig number one the example, I'm thinking about his classic cars, I don't know much of I'm not really a car guy. I've said then here before. I don't know. I don't know a whole lot about cars, and personally don't care a whole lot about cars. But there are definitely people who see real artistry in like a great classic car, and keeping a classic car restored has got to be a somewhat different proposition from keeping a painting or a film restored. Well, it's fine that she used the word restored, because there are actually two different versions that are the preserved. Oh yeah, yeah, preserved or restored. Yeah, whatever it means to key that car looking and working like it did when it was new. Right. So I had a brief conversation with Scott Benjamin who is one of the hosts of Car Stuff, an amazing podcasts made out of house to works, Great show, and Scott is an encyclopedia of auto knowledge. Up. Great guy and yeah, just a genuinely awesome guy. I would I would pose it that in fact, in this office office, he's the best of all of us. I'm never ever going to give anyone that title over myself. But I understand where you're coming from. Uh so I can't. I know that that's physically here you go. So I talked with him, and really there are two two methods of kind of two philosophies, you might say, when it comes to keeping classic cars in really good condition, and sometimes it just depends upon the condition and of the car when you take possession of it. So there's restoration, and restoration is exactly what sounds like. You are replacing original parts in the car with new parts. Those parts maybe brand new as a new machine them so that they will fit into the classic car and whatever capacity it was meant to. Or it may be something that you salvage from another car of that same make and model and you've taken it off one and put it onto another because of some defect or or damage that was done to the car in question. But this leads to a kind of philosophical problem, doesn't because you may have encountered this in a philosophy class. So if my uncle gives me an act of magnificent power as a gift, which we have not had in this studio for a long time, right, But I want to preserve this act of magnificent power. Except the problem is, uh, the handle gets damaged, so then I have to replace the handle, and then a little bit later the axe head. It's damaged and I have to replace the axe head. Is it still the same acts of magnificent power if all the pieces of it are not the original pieces? Right? This is the ship of Theseus paradox, where the idea being if you had a ship, and throughout the lifetime of that ship, at some point or another you had replaced every single element on that ship at least once, would it truly still be the same ship? Would it? Would there be the spirit of spirit or a car or so? Yeah? I think of this instead. It's a buick, all right, So you've got a buick theseus. The Theseus is buick. There's a sweet ride. Let me tell you, but at some point or another, you have replaced every single part of that buick. Could it truly be the same car? And there's some in the in the classic car collector circle who would say no, it doesn't mean that the restoration is bad, or that it's not a beautiful thing, or that it doesn't work well right. It could be all of those things. It could be gorgeous, it could be it could work like a dream. It could just be an amazing example of a restored vehicle. But there are competitions where people will bring cars in to be considered for awards, and some of them are restoration competitions where it's perfectly fine to bring a vehicle in that's been restored, and others are preservation competitions. The idea being that you have UH used conservation and preservation techniques to keep a car in its original form, not replacing anything usually major. You might have replaced little things like tires or something, but try to keep as many of the original parts intact as possible, UH, including things like the paint and the chrome. The idea being preserving as much of it as you possibly can. I was reading a story about a guy who had a car, and he said, the funny thing is I've replaced some parts, so I couldn't enter it into the preservation uh competitions because there are too many parts that have been replaced, but I haven't replaced enough parts, so I couldn't put it into the restoration competitions either. It's a really awesome looking car, but it doesn't fit in either category. And then Scott pointed out that there's also another version, and this is interesting because it goes beyond preservation. It's the restore. Restore mods are what they're called modified restored vehicles. So this is where you would take an old vehicle, you would restore it and you might replace uh something with some you know, modern amenities, like a modern engine in a in a classic nineteen thirties vehicle, so that it can suddenly go a lot faster, or it's much more efficient with fuel or whatever, or or I don't know, you put in a modern sound system, or you put on giant devil horns. Right, yeah, you could just have like the various spouts that shoot up flank, or if you just put on modern truck nuts. What if you and stall a series of massive speakers and a guy stands in front of your vehicle and plays guitar with flame shooting out the end of the entire time. I want that doufwagon. So yeah, I mean we're big do fans, all right. So if you want to learn more about car preservation as well as just all sorts of car related topics, definitely check out car Stuff because Scott really, I mean, he knows that world inside and out and has a lot to say about this. And they cover all sorts of topics, including old classic car models and makes that aren't really you know, available these days. Okay, I got another one that's alright, more along the lines of the film preservation. How about audio? Sure, Yeah, I mean when it comes to audio preservation, actually there are some things that are exactly like film. Imagine all those radio broadcasts, some of which were recorded, you know, you want to be able to preserve those. There are lots that were never recorded. So those those radio broadcasts went out and that was it. Fortunately, the Jerky Boys will always be in historical memory. Thank Heaven for that. All right. So, the National Recording Preservation Foundation is an organization here in the United States dedicated to preserving sound specifically, and this is a quote from their site, America's Unparalleled Radio music and Recorded Sound Heritage end quote. Uh. Now, it's not just about keeping them safe, but also making them available for research, education, and the simple pleasure of listening to sound. So in other words, like like film, it wouldn't do you any good if you just threw it in a room and didn't allow anyone to ever go in there, right, I mean, yeah, you're right, this stuff would exist, but without anyone to look at it doesn't matter. Kind of like if we talk about the art that if we remove it from its its place, it could ruin that art, but no one can get to that place, does it ultimately mad? But at any rate there there's again, just like I was talking about with film, it's tricky to to preserve audio recordings for the same general reasons you have to worry about do you concentrate on protecting the physical media itself, so for example, tape or vinyl records or c d s or whatever it may be that the music was stored upon. Even if you do keep it in really good condition, you then also have to have the accompanying mechanical apparatus that plays it right, right, Yeah, Yeah, the most perfectly preserved c d uh. Well, let's take for example, I don't know that the most perfectly preserved ZIP disk Okay, yeah, is it necessarily going to help you play your MP three's right? Yeah, even if you had like an entirely boss collection of music on there, if there's no no like device to plug into your computer so that you can access it, or the drivers necessary for your comp it or to be able to interact with that, there's a lot of stuff here right. Digitized music has similar issues. If you digitize stuff, then you have to think, well, sure, my, my various devices and computers can play this particular style of music file right now. But there's no reason to assume that this particular style, like this type of file will be the same forever. Like in in fifty years, it may be that no one uses this particular file type anymore. So that means you have to build in a plan what do we do to make sure that all this digital music can be preserved? Um? And that might mean transferring that file type to another file type repeatedly as things evolved. Also, all this music would be existing on some device or another. The digital music, it's not like it would just be ones and zeros in the air, so you have to worry about that too, Like what cool devices currently are storing them? And do you have backups? Do you have redundancy? Do you have a way of transferring it from to another machine when that machine has lived out as useful life? In these days, there's a fair amount of redundancy, And how most of these types of things are stored, Like there are a lot of copies out there usually, yes, especially for digital music. I mean, you know Pirate Bay alone. You know that brings up another thing where I think there are two very different ways of approaching the question, and that is books. Now, books is something that's going to be kind of like the issue I brought up with movies, where you know, is it could would you say it's preserved if it only exists in a VHS copy, Except it's going to be a little bit different because you can completely entirely preserve the essence of a work of literature without a physical form at all. Because the very idea of writing in text is I mean depending on like if as a original illustrations or something like that, but if it's dependence upon the appearance upon the page, but it's the because sponsor works of art as well. Yeah. Absolutely, So. The entire point of language is that it is encoding, and it's so the the content of work of literature. You can encode in language that should have the exact same value no matter where it's transferred, if you use the same sequence of code. So you know, the iliad in an ancient document should have the same literary value as the iliad on an e reader, but it wouldn't have exactly the same esthetic value. Because books and whatever type of medium you use for a work of literature, like a bound code X or a scroll or something like that, those things can be beautiful, aesthetically pleasing and worth preserving all on their own, as they give a blind poet. But go ahead, right, So I mean, I guess we should look at this at preserving works of literature in both forms like physical book as a sort of work of art on its own, and then also the text, which is a much easier proposition. I almost want to argue the easier part, but I'll get there. Let's talk about the physical part first, the physical part. There's there's this great pamphlet really from Cornell University about how to preserve books and This was written specifically for people who have a home library and they're concerned about I want to keep these books in really good conditions. So what do professional libraries do you know, or you know, established libraries, whether the research or whatever, what did they do to make certain their books remain in great shape? Well? And the first steps are like all the other stuff we've been talking about, is is basically just controlling the temperature and humidity. Yeah, you want the relative humidity to be somewhere between thirty and you don't want there to be so much humidity. Don't don't read your precious books in the bathtub. Certainly don't read them in the shower. I've gone through so many copies of good Omens that way. That's not even a joke. I have read. I have read and ruined multiple copies of good omens in the bath. The bath, by the way, perfect place to read good omens. Um. So, you want between thirty and six humidity for the same reasons we talked about with the oil paintings. Too high humidity, mold can form too low, and then your pages can become brittle. Uh. You also want to dust the books regularly to help prevent mold from growing. Since dust can contain mold spores, Cornell recommends using a vacuum with a HEPA filtration system and brush attachment. Oh we've talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. Keep the room dark, um, if you want as little light if there as possible, whatever, especially when you're just storing the books. You want as a little light in there as possible. But you certainly don't want sunlight, and you want to cut down on the UV radiation for the same reasons we talked about with the oil painting. Now, do libraries tell you that you need to be quiet because sound damages the books? No, they tell you to be quiet because people are trying to read. What what kind of library are you talking about? Well, you gotta remember I went to libraries shortly after the invention of the written word. So don't store leather books next to cloth or paper books. That's what Cornell suggests, because if they are stored next to each other, the dyes in the leather can bleed out and end up staining the books on either side of it. Uh. You shouldn't have your books packed into tightly on a shelf. They can be snug, but not so tight so that they're scrunching the spines, glue or the sewing it's contained. Also, if you store your books so that the so the covers of like sizes are next to each other, that will provide the most structural support for each cover. Yeah. If if it's a particularly large book, then obviously you want to uh to store it on its flat side. Um. But as long as you want the shelf to be deep enough so it completely covers the book. One of the important things about shelves they want they say, you know, you want to push your books back as far I guess the shelf as you can, so that there's overhang that protects the books in case of any leaks of water or anything the shelf, as well as from dust. But you want to keep them three inches away from the wall. You want to be protected from the wall in case anything goes wrong. They're um, like fire or or leaks. Um. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons for for the like they're really particular. They also say, don't storm in cabinets because there's no airflow in cabinets. You want there to be some airflow for your books. And uh, I was looking into like, how are these books being preserved officially, not just in people's homes. Like you know, these are great tips if you want to preserve some books for future generations. But I thought, well, I've always heard about the Library of Congress and about them bringing in books and adding them to the permanent collection. But I have no idea how that works. It's not just books, you know, They everything, film, music, all the sort of stuff can enter into the Library of Congress. Uh So I looked into it, and they get twelve thous and items per working day submitted to them from various libraries and collections. So obviously that can't just be every piece of content that people produce, one hopes not. You know, this is where we start getting a little snooty, or at least you have to if you're talking about preservation, because ultimately, you know, before we had talked about how people had not thought of the stuff they made as being particularly worthy of preservation, or it just didn't even enter into their thoughts. It wasn't even a consideration. Now we're getting to the opposite side, where, all right, we want to preserve stuff. What is worthy of preservation? My series of self published robot erotic novels are probably not going to make it in there. You never know until you ask Joe. Yeah, maybe if you change the name UH and then market it as a brand new piece of work, it can end up becoming a big hit movie at any rate. The UH, the these these submissions are reviewed by selection officers, and the selection officers are the ones who determine which ones are which of the submissions are added to the permanent collection, and which ones are not. So there actually is a curation process um as for protecting the text. And you had mentioned that you thought it was easier to protect the text than the physical thing. I don't necessarily believe that's true. Well, yeah, One thing I would think there is that if you have people who for some reason would like to make changes to a text for I don't know, ideological reasons or whatever like, you can certainly see that happening. Well, and not even not even ideological, Let's just say that there's an argument among scholars about the translation of a particular text from an ancient language there's a dead language to a modern language, and and that can end up becoming an issue. So one of the things I would think is that you know, the conversion of text from the written word into the digital format if you are updating it as well to translate it. Anytime are doing any sort of translation or interpretation, obviously you're going to be impacting that the spirit of whatever is behind that text. It's it's much much easier now, I would say, because I mean, it used to be that we couldn't just make a copy of a written text that would be exactly the same every time. It used to be that if you wanted a copy of a book, you'd have to have it copied by hand, which meant that there would almost definitely be errors introduced through the copying process. Now we have pretty much a hundred fidelity and copying. But there might be questions about right, but like yeah, the stage you're talking about, there can be changes, like if people are talking about translations or you know, arguments about what's more likely the original text maybe because of exactly this problem I just talked about. Well, it's also interesting that according to the Rand Corporation, which is UH, they've they've published a work called Addressing the Uncertain Future of Preserving the Past. This was a paper that was published in two thousand seven. UH. They addressed a lot of concerns about preservation UH, specifically the conversion of text into digital formats and the preservation of digital text in general, and they said it was important but not easy to preserve that data. They actually said that digital preservation doesn't preserve the work in its original form, So it could be that the original form is in some way intrinsically important to that work. That's the case of some works, not necessarily all of them, you could argue, at least uh. They also said that as the medium evolves, the digital format medium evolves, and digital storage evolves, you introduced the possibility that information could be corrupted as you transfer it from one format to another if it's completely uh incompatible for whatever reason um or as the report says that uh they're repeated, conversion leads to the inevitable cumulative corruption and degradation of each digital object as it is force fit into the procustan bed of each successive digital format, which we saw, for example, in the excellent film Multiplicity. Yes, perfect example. So in case you weren't able to parse that sentence. Essentially, what they're saying is that each file format tends to have very specific rules that you have to follow in order to use that file format, and it could be that moving from one format to the next evolutionary format, there are rules that are come into conflict and that could corrupt a text in some way or another, in ways that we can't necessarily anticipate right now. So they said that, you know, digital is great, but it's not flawless, and we have to remember it's not flawless, because that way we can perhaps anticipate and prevent these problems from happening, or at least compensate for them when they do. Yes, And this kind of leads us into the last section, which is very similar. In fact, I won't spend too much time because it repeats so much of the information we've already said. But software and computer files and even computer hardware because in some cases the programs that we've used are hard coded onto circuit boards. We before we started recording the show, we were talking about video games and things like the old Atari games were hard coded onto cartridges, so that software and hardware is all in one form. It's in fact, there is no software, it's just hardware. Uh. The Atari machine had the capability of reading that and translating that into a game that you played on your television. Um, So, digital obsolescence is really what we're talking about here, and that's a real problem. Moore's law is fantastic because it means that we're getting more and more powerful machines every couple of years, but it's also terrible because it means that older machines go obsolete very quickly, or relatively quickly at least, and software that's designed for those old machines may not run on our new machines, at least not without some sort of emulator. So we end up losing stuff that was created and may still have value because our current equipment is in a way too good to run the old stuff. Especially. I can see this being a problem if there is not a sort of chain of continuity of interest in this thing. Where I feel pretty confident about programs that people are always going to want to be revisiting, But what about something that people used in nineteen seventy four and then forgot about and nobody wanted to look back into it until this year. Well, and some of that's gonna just be lost. Yeah yeah, But for that very reason, I would argue that part of the reason why we're seeing this kind of attention on this area is because the people who grew up with those machines are now adults and they are thinking back to the stuff that they used as kids, and there's a concern of, well, look how much of this we no longer really have access to. Let's protect what's there and make sure we preserve it and allow future generations to have access to it. So when my great grandchild wants to know how crappy ET the Extraterrestrial Game wasn't there, he or she can experience that. Do you think we'll ever reach a time when all of the copies people had will be lost and then we'll be so sorry we buried all those copies in the desert, because that would those copies were the ones we should have had for archiving purpose. We did dig those back up. Most of them don't work anymore, but it's still in perfect condition. No, they've got a little wear and tear on them. Would say, uh, it's a funny coincidence that they had to come up out of a hole, because isn't that basically the only thing you do in the ET games you fall into holes. That is an accurate representation of the majority of the gameplay. Actually just a twenty year marketing stunt for for the style of game, there was the same guys, one day, there's gonna be a documentary about all the games we're going to make next month being buried in a pit. But in order for that to happen, we want to build in that pit gameplay element into the game. So it just looks like we're incredibly prescient Eggs. So one of the things I looked into was the International Federation of Data Organizations. There is such a thing that has identified three main areas that we should focus on to preserve data, and they identify them as organizational infrastructure. This is all the the people and the policies and the procedures that you put in place in order to UH preserve information digital information, technological concerns. This would be all the equipment and software that you would need in order to access the information and data curation, which is all about managing the data through its life cycle of interest and usefulness and also finding ways to transfer the data from one form to another if necessary. These are the three areas that have to be focused on if you wish to preserve UH digital information. Well, I know from experience that the cloud storage is not necessarily the best way to keep safe. You're unpublished robot erotic novels. You don't want hackers reading them before they come to market. Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's there's really it's not. It's not a literal cloud of information that's that's hovering somewhere. It's someone else's computer. Cloud means somebody else's computer exactly. Yeah. Ultimately, while while we think of it as, oh, we can access this stuff wherever we go, Like if I if I store a document on cloud storage service, and the big advantage is that no matter where I go, I can log into that service and get a copy of that document. It's fantastic. It doesn't have to live on my computer, but it is living on someone's computer. It's living on multiple computers. If it's a good cloud service because of redundancy, if something happens to that one machine, and all the data that's on that machine would be preserved because it exists on multiple other machines as well as all most cloud storage works is that if you didn't have redundancy, you wouldn't have customers for very long because the first time something goes wrong, you would lose customer data. Um but because it does exist on someone's machines, that does mean that eventually that machine is going to get reached the end of its useful life. The information needs to be transferred. It could also mean that the entity, the one that's providing the cloud service, could go out of business for one reason or another, then what happens to the data? There are also other questions as well, like who owns the data? Right that. That's been one of those questions that has still unresolved, the idea if I store something on cloud service, do I still retain ownership of it? Does the person whose computer it lives upon own it? To what extent? Do they own it? You probably signed a contract saying they do on in terms of service, and you click that little button without reading it. Uh yeah, So it's it's complicated and it's not a guarantee. Right Like if if I sit there and think, oh, I love Facebook, because all those pictures are saved forever on Facebook, I don't have to store them on my computer, I don't have to print them out and put them in books. I don't have to have them on thumb drives that are unlabeled, and I'll never figure out which one has what I can just keep them on Facebook. What if Facebook goes out of business. It seems like it's unlikely due to how it how it's standing right now in the tech world. But we thought the same thing about my Space. Yeah, you know, and that definitely has changed significantly. Well, or things can change hands like I think I felt that way about live journal back in the day, and and that has certainly changed. Yes, so cloud storage is not necessarily a guarantee. I think ultimately the message we are giving is that preservation is something that is non trivial. It requires a lot of work, and uh, we still think that that work is valuable that that it's it's a good thing to preserve this stuff that we're creating. It's good for us to be able to keep something in some level of permanence, especially in a world where we are treating our day to day existence more and more as if it were disposable, and there's so much stuff that we buy and then within a couple of years we toss it and buy something new. Uh, it's it's nice for us to concentrate on things that are worthy of preservation. So, uh, it was really interesting to look into this and of course, it's such a huge topic and we covered a slice. There's so many other things we can talk about. In fact, we could go into much deeper detail on any of the ones we've covered today, and that makes me curious. 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Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to Forward Thinking. Pay there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks in the future and says inside the museum's infinity goes up on trial. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is going to be part two of our two part episode about how to make It Last Forever, about the future of historical preservation and restoration, how to take the present and make it go the long haul. So if you haven't heard part one yet, you should go back and check out part one of this episode. We need to make a bunch of references to things we've already said. So you've I mean, I have faith in you guys. You're pretty quick on the uptake, you know, just just to head off any confusion. Sure, but without further ado, here is part due. It belongs in the museum. I hope that those that goes right into my rant about how they Okay, But let's run back to the past a little bit more. In fact, let's run farther back than we did with the idea of like an oil painting from the Renaissance. What about the condition of archaeological artifacts. Yeah, I want to pose the question, what's the future of stealing artifacts from other cultures and putting in them in your own museums? Okay, this is mostly a cheeky Indiana la Do you have an opinion? Is it Lauren's rant time? No? No, it's not. It's okay, Well, I mean to actually, actually a kind of is because the past hundred and fifty years or so have included a whole lot of rich white people falling so much in love with another culture that they went there, bought and or just took a bunch of their stuff, and then brought it back home for private or public display. Well, clearly because these rich white people realize that whatever indigenous population isn't going to take the efforts to preserve that art, they have to take it on themselves. Well, and it's not enriching anyone's culture if they just leave it there, but they can enrich the lives of other rich white people if they bring it back to theirs. But I completely agree with it. I am in fact now ranting. But you know so that that sucks. We we generally try not to do that anymore. And there are some digital steps that are being taken to bring artifacts to interested parties without ever having to remove the pieces. We've talked about museums and cultural centers use of virtual reality and and a lot of organizations like that are hosting as many of their or as much of their collections online as possible and in really high quality photographs for free. But see an image of a thing is not the same as seeing a thing, there's sure, and well, I mean, one thing you can just rely on these days, hopefully to have some exchange, Like if you want to see artifacts from somewhere on the other side of the world, is that plenty of museums today do exhibit exchanges, right, there will be a traveling exhibit where something from Egypt comes to your local museum. Oh sure. And that, actually, I think is really that kind of international cooperation is the real future of dealing with with artifacts and sharing that kind of information across cultures. And it really gives me the work fundies every tomb version. Right. But you know, unfortunately, even if you leave a thing where you found it, or even if you have constructed a very careful museum exhibit in which it can travel, public visitation presents lots of problems for artifacts because even if you're if you're a cautious tourist who's not going around like poking the oil paintings or climbing on the statues, flash photography, taking flash photography, you're doing things like like opening doors, or possessing a body temperature that's higher than the air around you, or or breathing. Uh, people are lousy with breath just all the time, and and all all of these things create fluctuations in the temperature and humidity, which we have talked about is being not good. So let me guess there's a technology that will prevent us from breathing. I actually can name quite a few. Yeah. No, humans have made a lot of technologies that prevent people from breathing in the long run. No, no, it's not there. But there is a project that is attempting to solve these problems by replicating the artwork, replicating specifically China's. And I'm probably gonna say this wrong. I'm really sorry, magol. I think it's how you say Mago caves. Uh, it looks like Mogau if you're if you're a dumb American, But I don't think that's how you say it. Anyway, it's a series of four hundred and nine two caves that were carved out of a cliff face in the Goulbi Desert and decorated by Buddhist monks and scholars and merchants from around three hundred to drede there. I don't have words to describe them that I can really say on air. They're they're, they're they're beautiful. They're really awesome. Um and that a local academy called the Don Huang Academy has teamed up with Los Angeles Getty Conservation Institute to painstakingly recreate three of these caves and and all of their painted walls and ceilings and all of their statuary and take them on international tours and exhibitions. One of these brooms has been touring around Asia for a while. They're going to hit the US for the first time in May of twenty six. And it's as though you put pyramid ceilings in like large two car garages and then covered them in an amazing artwork over the course of centuries. They're they're really beautiful. Well, yeah, I'm all in favor of that. I think that's really cool. Like, in fact, i've seen plenty of that already in in the more like a natural natural history kind of setting right right, Yeah, because dinosaur bones that you see in a museum are probably not made of dinosaur bones. They're they're probably a plastic print of a dinosaur or mold. I'm thinking of their St John's Castle in Limerick, Ireland. Um phenomenal if you are interested in medieval Renaissance history. It's a fantastic museum that also tries to recreate that experience of of not just you know, the castle at its height, but how it was built. And so they actually take advantage of the ruins to tell you how that section was created because you can see the cross sections. So so cool. A cool thing about uh presenting information in a way that is combining the original work with either a virtual representation or with uh with with replicas to get across the wonder without actually damaging that original work. Sure sure uh. And and like with paintings, there's some pretty high tech techniques that are that are being used to to study artifacts that have been worn down over time without damaging them any further. For example, some researchers out of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Missouri found that a scanning acoustic microscope can be used to reveal impressions and metal that have been worn invisible to the human eye. You know, for example, a smith's hallmark in in polished silver, or the design that was stamped into a coin. Uh, metal that has been worn smooth can still contain areas of compression and deformation where the stamps or the engravings were applied. And and so by taking these careful acoustic scans, you can really reveal the original patterns and and therefore, you know, you can let historians know when and where and how the piece was created. This is kind of like the zoom and enhance of archaeological world. Yeah, it's really I mean, I wouldn't have never thought this would have been possible. It's pretty incredible. Okay, So a lot of these things that we're discussing, though, are at least somewhat static in nature. Like they're there a thing that has, you know, at some level, been carved or printed, or or developed in the case of film, or painted, and it's supposed to stay the way it is. But what about things that are supposed to work? And I'm thinking, like a machine, what if we want to keep a machine that has working parts and moving bits. You know here, just machines are never art Now, I have a few terminator friends who would take offense at that statement, but I'll say that machines aren't artists. Those those artistic cyborgs are fine, right right, Um, they do not deal with bad reviews very well. No, no, no, no, you should never give your robot artists lasers. Mistig number one the example, I'm thinking about his classic cars, I don't know much of I'm not really a car guy. I've said then here before. I don't know. I don't know a whole lot about cars, and personally don't care a whole lot about cars. But there are definitely people who see real artistry in like a great classic car, and keeping a classic car restored has got to be a somewhat different proposition from keeping a painting or a film restored. Well, it's fine that she used the word restored, because there are actually two different versions that are the preserved. Oh yeah, yeah, preserved or restored. Yeah, whatever it means to key that car looking and working like it did when it was new. Right. So I had a brief conversation with Scott Benjamin who is one of the hosts of Car Stuff, an amazing podcasts made out of house to works, Great show, and Scott is an encyclopedia of auto knowledge. Up. Great guy and yeah, just a genuinely awesome guy. I would I would pose it that in fact, in this office office, he's the best of all of us. I'm never ever going to give anyone that title over myself. But I understand where you're coming from. Uh so I can't. I know that that's physically here you go. So I talked with him, and really there are two two methods of kind of two philosophies, you might say, when it comes to keeping classic cars in really good condition, and sometimes it just depends upon the condition and of the car when you take possession of it. So there's restoration, and restoration is exactly what sounds like. You are replacing original parts in the car with new parts. Those parts maybe brand new as a new machine them so that they will fit into the classic car and whatever capacity it was meant to. Or it may be something that you salvage from another car of that same make and model and you've taken it off one and put it onto another because of some defect or or damage that was done to the car in question. But this leads to a kind of philosophical problem, doesn't because you may have encountered this in a philosophy class. So if my uncle gives me an act of magnificent power as a gift, which we have not had in this studio for a long time, right, But I want to preserve this act of magnificent power. Except the problem is, uh, the handle gets damaged, so then I have to replace the handle, and then a little bit later the axe head. It's damaged and I have to replace the axe head. Is it still the same acts of magnificent power if all the pieces of it are not the original pieces? Right? This is the ship of Theseus paradox, where the idea being if you had a ship, and throughout the lifetime of that ship, at some point or another you had replaced every single element on that ship at least once, would it truly still be the same ship? Would it? Would there be the spirit of spirit or a car or so? Yeah? I think of this instead. It's a buick, all right, So you've got a buick theseus. The Theseus is buick. There's a sweet ride. Let me tell you, but at some point or another, you have replaced every single part of that buick. Could it truly be the same car? And there's some in the in the classic car collector circle who would say no, it doesn't mean that the restoration is bad, or that it's not a beautiful thing, or that it doesn't work well right. It could be all of those things. It could be gorgeous, it could be it could work like a dream. It could just be an amazing example of a restored vehicle. But there are competitions where people will bring cars in to be considered for awards, and some of them are restoration competitions where it's perfectly fine to bring a vehicle in that's been restored, and others are preservation competitions. The idea being that you have UH used conservation and preservation techniques to keep a car in its original form, not replacing anything usually major. You might have replaced little things like tires or something, but try to keep as many of the original parts intact as possible, UH, including things like the paint and the chrome. The idea being preserving as much of it as you possibly can. I was reading a story about a guy who had a car, and he said, the funny thing is I've replaced some parts, so I couldn't enter it into the preservation uh competitions because there are too many parts that have been replaced, but I haven't replaced enough parts, so I couldn't put it into the restoration competitions either. It's a really awesome looking car, but it doesn't fit in either category. And then Scott pointed out that there's also another version, and this is interesting because it goes beyond preservation. It's the restore. Restore mods are what they're called modified restored vehicles. So this is where you would take an old vehicle, you would restore it and you might replace uh something with some you know, modern amenities, like a modern engine in a in a classic nineteen thirties vehicle, so that it can suddenly go a lot faster, or it's much more efficient with fuel or whatever, or or I don't know, you put in a modern sound system, or you put on giant devil horns. Right, yeah, you could just have like the various spouts that shoot up flank, or if you just put on modern truck nuts. What if you and stall a series of massive speakers and a guy stands in front of your vehicle and plays guitar with flame shooting out the end of the entire time. I want that doufwagon. So yeah, I mean we're big do fans, all right. So if you want to learn more about car preservation as well as just all sorts of car related topics, definitely check out car Stuff because Scott really, I mean, he knows that world inside and out and has a lot to say about this. And they cover all sorts of topics, including old classic car models and makes that aren't really you know, available these days. Okay, I got another one that's alright, more along the lines of the film preservation. How about audio? Sure, Yeah, I mean when it comes to audio preservation, actually there are some things that are exactly like film. Imagine all those radio broadcasts, some of which were recorded, you know, you want to be able to preserve those. There are lots that were never recorded. So those those radio broadcasts went out and that was it. Fortunately, the Jerky Boys will always be in historical memory. Thank Heaven for that. All right. So, the National Recording Preservation Foundation is an organization here in the United States dedicated to preserving sound specifically, and this is a quote from their site, America's Unparalleled Radio music and Recorded Sound Heritage end quote. Uh. Now, it's not just about keeping them safe, but also making them available for research, education, and the simple pleasure of listening to sound. So in other words, like like film, it wouldn't do you any good if you just threw it in a room and didn't allow anyone to ever go in there, right, I mean, yeah, you're right, this stuff would exist, but without anyone to look at it doesn't matter. Kind of like if we talk about the art that if we remove it from its its place, it could ruin that art, but no one can get to that place, does it ultimately mad? But at any rate there there's again, just like I was talking about with film, it's tricky to to preserve audio recordings for the same general reasons you have to worry about do you concentrate on protecting the physical media itself, so for example, tape or vinyl records or c d s or whatever it may be that the music was stored upon. Even if you do keep it in really good condition, you then also have to have the accompanying mechanical apparatus that plays it right, right, Yeah, Yeah, the most perfectly preserved c d uh. Well, let's take for example, I don't know that the most perfectly preserved ZIP disk Okay, yeah, is it necessarily going to help you play your MP three's right? Yeah, even if you had like an entirely boss collection of music on there, if there's no no like device to plug into your computer so that you can access it, or the drivers necessary for your comp it or to be able to interact with that, there's a lot of stuff here right. Digitized music has similar issues. If you digitize stuff, then you have to think, well, sure, my, my various devices and computers can play this particular style of music file right now. But there's no reason to assume that this particular style, like this type of file will be the same forever. Like in in fifty years, it may be that no one uses this particular file type anymore. So that means you have to build in a plan what do we do to make sure that all this digital music can be preserved? Um? And that might mean transferring that file type to another file type repeatedly as things evolved. Also, all this music would be existing on some device or another. The digital music, it's not like it would just be ones and zeros in the air, so you have to worry about that too, Like what cool devices currently are storing them? And do you have backups? Do you have redundancy? Do you have a way of transferring it from to another machine when that machine has lived out as useful life? In these days, there's a fair amount of redundancy, And how most of these types of things are stored, Like there are a lot of copies out there usually, yes, especially for digital music. I mean, you know Pirate Bay alone. You know that brings up another thing where I think there are two very different ways of approaching the question, and that is books. Now, books is something that's going to be kind of like the issue I brought up with movies, where you know, is it could would you say it's preserved if it only exists in a VHS copy, Except it's going to be a little bit different because you can completely entirely preserve the essence of a work of literature without a physical form at all. Because the very idea of writing in text is I mean depending on like if as a original illustrations or something like that, but if it's dependence upon the appearance upon the page, but it's the because sponsor works of art as well. Yeah. Absolutely, So. The entire point of language is that it is encoding, and it's so the the content of work of literature. You can encode in language that should have the exact same value no matter where it's transferred, if you use the same sequence of code. So you know, the iliad in an ancient document should have the same literary value as the iliad on an e reader, but it wouldn't have exactly the same esthetic value. Because books and whatever type of medium you use for a work of literature, like a bound code X or a scroll or something like that, those things can be beautiful, aesthetically pleasing and worth preserving all on their own, as they give a blind poet. But go ahead, right, So I mean, I guess we should look at this at preserving works of literature in both forms like physical book as a sort of work of art on its own, and then also the text, which is a much easier proposition. I almost want to argue the easier part, but I'll get there. Let's talk about the physical part first, the physical part. There's there's this great pamphlet really from Cornell University about how to preserve books and This was written specifically for people who have a home library and they're concerned about I want to keep these books in really good conditions. So what do professional libraries do you know, or you know, established libraries, whether the research or whatever, what did they do to make certain their books remain in great shape? Well? And the first steps are like all the other stuff we've been talking about, is is basically just controlling the temperature and humidity. Yeah, you want the relative humidity to be somewhere between thirty and you don't want there to be so much humidity. Don't don't read your precious books in the bathtub. Certainly don't read them in the shower. I've gone through so many copies of good Omens that way. That's not even a joke. I have read. I have read and ruined multiple copies of good omens in the bath. The bath, by the way, perfect place to read good omens. Um. So, you want between thirty and six humidity for the same reasons we talked about with the oil paintings. Too high humidity, mold can form too low, and then your pages can become brittle. Uh. You also want to dust the books regularly to help prevent mold from growing. Since dust can contain mold spores, Cornell recommends using a vacuum with a HEPA filtration system and brush attachment. Oh we've talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. Keep the room dark, um, if you want as little light if there as possible, whatever, especially when you're just storing the books. You want as a little light in there as possible. But you certainly don't want sunlight, and you want to cut down on the UV radiation for the same reasons we talked about with the oil painting. Now, do libraries tell you that you need to be quiet because sound damages the books? No, they tell you to be quiet because people are trying to read. What what kind of library are you talking about? Well, you gotta remember I went to libraries shortly after the invention of the written word. So don't store leather books next to cloth or paper books. That's what Cornell suggests, because if they are stored next to each other, the dyes in the leather can bleed out and end up staining the books on either side of it. Uh. You shouldn't have your books packed into tightly on a shelf. They can be snug, but not so tight so that they're scrunching the spines, glue or the sewing it's contained. Also, if you store your books so that the so the covers of like sizes are next to each other, that will provide the most structural support for each cover. Yeah. If if it's a particularly large book, then obviously you want to uh to store it on its flat side. Um. But as long as you want the shelf to be deep enough so it completely covers the book. One of the important things about shelves they want they say, you know, you want to push your books back as far I guess the shelf as you can, so that there's overhang that protects the books in case of any leaks of water or anything the shelf, as well as from dust. But you want to keep them three inches away from the wall. You want to be protected from the wall in case anything goes wrong. They're um, like fire or or leaks. Um. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons for for the like they're really particular. They also say, don't storm in cabinets because there's no airflow in cabinets. You want there to be some airflow for your books. And uh, I was looking into like, how are these books being preserved officially, not just in people's homes. Like you know, these are great tips if you want to preserve some books for future generations. But I thought, well, I've always heard about the Library of Congress and about them bringing in books and adding them to the permanent collection. But I have no idea how that works. It's not just books, you know, They everything, film, music, all the sort of stuff can enter into the Library of Congress. Uh So I looked into it, and they get twelve thous and items per working day submitted to them from various libraries and collections. So obviously that can't just be every piece of content that people produce, one hopes not. You know, this is where we start getting a little snooty, or at least you have to if you're talking about preservation, because ultimately, you know, before we had talked about how people had not thought of the stuff they made as being particularly worthy of preservation, or it just didn't even enter into their thoughts. It wasn't even a consideration. Now we're getting to the opposite side, where, all right, we want to preserve stuff. What is worthy of preservation? My series of self published robot erotic novels are probably not going to make it in there. You never know until you ask Joe. Yeah, maybe if you change the name UH and then market it as a brand new piece of work, it can end up becoming a big hit movie at any rate. The UH, the these these submissions are reviewed by selection officers, and the selection officers are the ones who determine which ones are which of the submissions are added to the permanent collection, and which ones are not. So there actually is a curation process um as for protecting the text. And you had mentioned that you thought it was easier to protect the text than the physical thing. I don't necessarily believe that's true. Well, yeah, One thing I would think there is that if you have people who for some reason would like to make changes to a text for I don't know, ideological reasons or whatever like, you can certainly see that happening. Well, and not even not even ideological, Let's just say that there's an argument among scholars about the translation of a particular text from an ancient language there's a dead language to a modern language, and and that can end up becoming an issue. So one of the things I would think is that you know, the conversion of text from the written word into the digital format if you are updating it as well to translate it. Anytime are doing any sort of translation or interpretation, obviously you're going to be impacting that the spirit of whatever is behind that text. It's it's much much easier now, I would say, because I mean, it used to be that we couldn't just make a copy of a written text that would be exactly the same every time. It used to be that if you wanted a copy of a book, you'd have to have it copied by hand, which meant that there would almost definitely be errors introduced through the copying process. Now we have pretty much a hundred fidelity and copying. But there might be questions about right, but like yeah, the stage you're talking about, there can be changes, like if people are talking about translations or you know, arguments about what's more likely the original text maybe because of exactly this problem I just talked about. Well, it's also interesting that according to the Rand Corporation, which is UH, they've they've published a work called Addressing the Uncertain Future of Preserving the Past. This was a paper that was published in two thousand seven. UH. They addressed a lot of concerns about preservation UH, specifically the conversion of text into digital formats and the preservation of digital text in general, and they said it was important but not easy to preserve that data. They actually said that digital preservation doesn't preserve the work in its original form, So it could be that the original form is in some way intrinsically important to that work. That's the case of some works, not necessarily all of them, you could argue, at least uh. They also said that as the medium evolves, the digital format medium evolves, and digital storage evolves, you introduced the possibility that information could be corrupted as you transfer it from one format to another if it's completely uh incompatible for whatever reason um or as the report says that uh they're repeated, conversion leads to the inevitable cumulative corruption and degradation of each digital object as it is force fit into the procustan bed of each successive digital format, which we saw, for example, in the excellent film Multiplicity. Yes, perfect example. So in case you weren't able to parse that sentence. Essentially, what they're saying is that each file format tends to have very specific rules that you have to follow in order to use that file format, and it could be that moving from one format to the next evolutionary format, there are rules that are come into conflict and that could corrupt a text in some way or another, in ways that we can't necessarily anticipate right now. So they said that, you know, digital is great, but it's not flawless, and we have to remember it's not flawless, because that way we can perhaps anticipate and prevent these problems from happening, or at least compensate for them when they do. Yes, And this kind of leads us into the last section, which is very similar. In fact, I won't spend too much time because it repeats so much of the information we've already said. But software and computer files and even computer hardware because in some cases the programs that we've used are hard coded onto circuit boards. We before we started recording the show, we were talking about video games and things like the old Atari games were hard coded onto cartridges, so that software and hardware is all in one form. It's in fact, there is no software, it's just hardware. Uh. The Atari machine had the capability of reading that and translating that into a game that you played on your television. Um, So, digital obsolescence is really what we're talking about here, and that's a real problem. Moore's law is fantastic because it means that we're getting more and more powerful machines every couple of years, but it's also terrible because it means that older machines go obsolete very quickly, or relatively quickly at least, and software that's designed for those old machines may not run on our new machines, at least not without some sort of emulator. So we end up losing stuff that was created and may still have value because our current equipment is in a way too good to run the old stuff. Especially. I can see this being a problem if there is not a sort of chain of continuity of interest in this thing. Where I feel pretty confident about programs that people are always going to want to be revisiting, But what about something that people used in nineteen seventy four and then forgot about and nobody wanted to look back into it until this year. Well, and some of that's gonna just be lost. Yeah yeah, But for that very reason, I would argue that part of the reason why we're seeing this kind of attention on this area is because the people who grew up with those machines are now adults and they are thinking back to the stuff that they used as kids, and there's a concern of, well, look how much of this we no longer really have access to. Let's protect what's there and make sure we preserve it and allow future generations to have access to it. So when my great grandchild wants to know how crappy ET the Extraterrestrial Game wasn't there, he or she can experience that. Do you think we'll ever reach a time when all of the copies people had will be lost and then we'll be so sorry we buried all those copies in the desert, because that would those copies were the ones we should have had for archiving purpose. We did dig those back up. Most of them don't work anymore, but it's still in perfect condition. No, they've got a little wear and tear on them. Would say, uh, it's a funny coincidence that they had to come up out of a hole, because isn't that basically the only thing you do in the ET games you fall into holes. That is an accurate representation of the majority of the gameplay. Actually just a twenty year marketing stunt for for the style of game, there was the same guys, one day, there's gonna be a documentary about all the games we're going to make next month being buried in a pit. But in order for that to happen, we want to build in that pit gameplay element into the game. So it just looks like we're incredibly prescient Eggs. So one of the things I looked into was the International Federation of Data Organizations. There is such a thing that has identified three main areas that we should focus on to preserve data, and they identify them as organizational infrastructure. This is all the the people and the policies and the procedures that you put in place in order to UH preserve information digital information, technological concerns. This would be all the equipment and software that you would need in order to access the information and data curation, which is all about managing the data through its life cycle of interest and usefulness and also finding ways to transfer the data from one form to another if necessary. These are the three areas that have to be focused on if you wish to preserve UH digital information. Well, I know from experience that the cloud storage is not necessarily the best way to keep safe. You're unpublished robot erotic novels. You don't want hackers reading them before they come to market. Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's there's really it's not. It's not a literal cloud of information that's that's hovering somewhere. It's someone else's computer. Cloud means somebody else's computer exactly. Yeah. Ultimately, while while we think of it as, oh, we can access this stuff wherever we go, Like if I if I store a document on cloud storage service, and the big advantage is that no matter where I go, I can log into that service and get a copy of that document. It's fantastic. It doesn't have to live on my computer, but it is living on someone's computer. It's living on multiple computers. If it's a good cloud service because of redundancy, if something happens to that one machine, and all the data that's on that machine would be preserved because it exists on multiple other machines as well as all most cloud storage works is that if you didn't have redundancy, you wouldn't have customers for very long because the first time something goes wrong, you would lose customer data. Um but because it does exist on someone's machines, that does mean that eventually that machine is going to get reached the end of its useful life. The information needs to be transferred. It could also mean that the entity, the one that's providing the cloud service, could go out of business for one reason or another, then what happens to the data? There are also other questions as well, like who owns the data? Right that. That's been one of those questions that has still unresolved, the idea if I store something on cloud service, do I still retain ownership of it? Does the person whose computer it lives upon own it? To what extent? Do they own it? You probably signed a contract saying they do on in terms of service, and you click that little button without reading it. Uh yeah, So it's it's complicated and it's not a guarantee. Right Like if if I sit there and think, oh, I love Facebook, because all those pictures are saved forever on Facebook, I don't have to store them on my computer, I don't have to print them out and put them in books. I don't have to have them on thumb drives that are unlabeled, and I'll never figure out which one has what I can just keep them on Facebook. What if Facebook goes out of business. It seems like it's unlikely due to how it how it's standing right now in the tech world. But we thought the same thing about my Space. Yeah, you know, and that definitely has changed significantly. Well, or things can change hands like I think I felt that way about live journal back in the day, and and that has certainly changed. Yes, so cloud storage is not necessarily a guarantee. I think ultimately the message we are giving is that preservation is something that is non trivial. It requires a lot of work, and uh, we still think that that work is valuable that that it's it's a good thing to preserve this stuff that we're creating. It's good for us to be able to keep something in some level of permanence, especially in a world where we are treating our day to day existence more and more as if it were disposable, and there's so much stuff that we buy and then within a couple of years we toss it and buy something new. Uh, it's it's nice for us to concentrate on things that are worthy of preservation. So, uh, it was really interesting to look into this and of course, it's such a huge topic and we covered a slice. There's so many other things we can talk about. In fact, we could go into much deeper detail on any of the ones we've covered today, and that makes me curious. If you guys out there there's something specific you would like to hear more about, or there's another topic about what will X be like in the future, let us know. Send us a message the email addresses f W thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook at Twitter and Google Plus where FW thinking at Facebook. Just search FW thinking of the search bar. We'll pop up. You can leave us a message and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, I visit forward Thinking dot com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places,