[–] GoodGodKirk ago
Technology as you know it will change so much in the next few years and make today's technology so irrelevant that you won't care.
virtual, augmented, and mixed realities will require everything to be remade and interactive. In some cases, some technology will disappear...like TV's and monitors. You think advertising is scary now? just wait...
There are people who pursue old technologies, old knowledge, and old ways of living. I can see what you're saying, but generally I think it's easier to reinvent old lost technology than it was to create it in the first place, especially where artifacts exist. While I can see the remote possibility for what you're suggesting, and some knowledge and probably the majority of human history has been lost, I can't imagine us completely losing the path from nothing up to a fairly advanced technological states because there are individuals who are interested in the preservation of that path, and even if some critical knowledge is lost, it's only a small blip that could be re-engineered or rediscovered. I do however think that knowledge occasionally has to be rediscovered on a regular basis because our process of knowledge preservation and promulgation is far from perfect. We would progress much faster if we never had to duplicate efforts, but it's a hard problem to solve, although the Internet and search engines do help.
Edit: Once robots can handle 100% of their production process or once we hit the technological singularity, all bets are off, and what you're saying has a greater chance of happening, but it's still not a guarantee. It's simple too difficult to predict how a whole society that doesn't need to work would function.
[–] i_scream_trucks ago
implying it hasnt already
[–] Diogenes_The_Cynic [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
There is another way its already zombifying. In the earlier days of the internet, people used to frequently upload OC. Stuff like newspaper archives, digital libraries, etc. But since this is the commercial internet, they only stay up as long as people are willing to pay for it, so unless its a university server, its eventually gonna be erased from the internet.
I kinda do internet archaeology through my subverse v/staticwebpages. What I see frequently is that the high quality original uploads were put up really early on, then people start using that as reference material, then the reference material gets erased, but the articles written on top of the reference material stays up. Since the remaining best source material is now the secondary source, when people do research, thats what gets quoted, until the secondary material is scrubbed. If you rewash this remaining material enough times on increasingly poor quality source material, you end up with buzzshit.
We are certainly seeing that happening now.
But it'll get to a point where it becomes increasingly untenable to not have source material up.
[–] MyDearWatson 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I saw an article recently talking about the loss of old formats and how we might be in the middle of what will become a digital dark age (from the view of the future). Someone saying to not worry too much as