Comments on: An End to Permanence? http://www.edrants.com/an-end-to-permanence/ a cultural website in ever-shifting standing Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:01:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: The Benefits of Notebooks : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits http://www.edrants.com/an-end-to-permanence/comment-page-1/#comment-258821 The Benefits of Notebooks : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:40:21 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=12417#comment-258821 [...] take back a written thought, except by scratching it out or burning it. I wrote about linkrot and the problems with online permanence back in August. And it occurs to me that we may be driven to confess our most private details to [...] [...] take back a written thought, except by scratching it out or burning it. I wrote about linkrot and the problems with online permanence back in August. And it occurs to me that we may be driven to confess our most private details to [...]

]]> By: Linkrot on Steroids: The Problems with URL Shorteners : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits http://www.edrants.com/an-end-to-permanence/comment-page-1/#comment-257107 Linkrot on Steroids: The Problems with URL Shorteners : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:25:18 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=12417#comment-257107 [...] As Simon Owens recently observed, tr.im — a service that shortened URLs — is now gone. The links that it once helpfully compressed are now useless. For those who may have passed on a link to a pal, tweeted a particularly helpful article, or otherwise stopped an unruly URL from breaking in two because of a monitor’s constraining width, this metadata means nothing. How long will it be before all the other URL shortening services are about as valuable as a maniac with a fetish for smearing Crisco on random monitors or some sad and anonymous man who wastes his entire weekend on the Internet pretending to be somebody else on Twitter? Twhirl, the Adobe AIR app aiding folks in posting silly thoughts and links to Twitter, presents us with digg.com, is.gd, bit.ly, snurl.com, and twurl.nl as link-shortening options, all desperately needed if anyone expects to use the 140 character limit. But will these shorteners even exist in six months? Shouldn’t the mad scientists at Twitter come up with an in-house standard to ensure some longevity? (All this, of course, assumes that our tweets, or anything we put online, is even permanent — a subject I rambled at length about last week.) [...] [...] As Simon Owens recently observed, tr.im — a service that shortened URLs — is now gone. The links that it once helpfully compressed are now useless. For those who may have passed on a link to a pal, tweeted a particularly helpful article, or otherwise stopped an unruly URL from breaking in two because of a monitor’s constraining width, this metadata means nothing. How long will it be before all the other URL shortening services are about as valuable as a maniac with a fetish for smearing Crisco on random monitors or some sad and anonymous man who wastes his entire weekend on the Internet pretending to be somebody else on Twitter? Twhirl, the Adobe AIR app aiding folks in posting silly thoughts and links to Twitter, presents us with digg.com, is.gd, bit.ly, snurl.com, and twurl.nl as link-shortening options, all desperately needed if anyone expects to use the 140 character limit. But will these shorteners even exist in six months? Shouldn’t the mad scientists at Twitter come up with an in-house standard to ensure some longevity? (All this, of course, assumes that our tweets, or anything we put online, is even permanent — a subject I rambled at length about last week.) [...]

]]> By: Dan Biddle http://www.edrants.com/an-end-to-permanence/comment-page-1/#comment-256959 Dan Biddle Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:50:21 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=12417#comment-256959 Interesting and difficult issues - especially your considerations re deleting old writings. Author William Golding bought and burnt any copies of his juvenalia poetry (published against his will). So rare as to be worth a fortune, he continued his poetic pogrom all his life. Did he get them all? I'd stand against this book burning, but Milan Kundera argues in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/kundera-testaments.html" rel="nofollow">Testaments Betrayed</a> that Max Brod betrayed Kafka by publishing (certain pieces of) his works after his death, rather than destroying them as requested by the author. Which, as an occasional writer, I can sympathise with in some part. The web though, is a different canvas. I'd retain your early posts. If there is work there now you find unbearable, I'd criticise it in a new post (if it didn't feel too narcissistic to do so). The older you in conversation with the younger. It might be an interesting exercise. Nor should you fear falling into a camp with the likes of Keen or Siegel; their views are challenging a popular, fast moving assumption with often broad derisive strokes, but they can fuel debate around a subject worthy of such discussion <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/08/why-do-people-still-need-to-ce.shtml" rel="nofollow">despite what Lee Siegel wrote yesterday on the BBC Digital Revolution blog</a> questioning whether the documentary about the web needed to exist at all as the web is <i>'an ultimately pedestrian technology that has been around for two decades'</i>. Disclosure: I am producing the BBC Digital Revolution blog. I'm not here to spam. We want to engage across the web in the hope that people will share their stories with us, discuss the web and the 'revolution' it may or may not have created (Lee Siegel, as you will see, clearly thinks not!) Many thanks, Dan Interesting and difficult issues – especially your considerations re deleting old writings. Author William Golding bought and burnt any copies of his juvenalia poetry (published against his will). So rare as to be worth a fortune, he continued his poetic pogrom all his life. Did he get them all?

I’d stand against this book burning, but Milan Kundera argues in Testaments Betrayed that Max Brod betrayed Kafka by publishing (certain pieces of) his works after his death, rather than destroying them as requested by the author. Which, as an occasional writer, I can sympathise with in some part.

The web though, is a different canvas. I’d retain your early posts. If there is work there now you find unbearable, I’d criticise it in a new post (if it didn’t feel too narcissistic to do so). The older you in conversation with the younger. It might be an interesting exercise.

Nor should you fear falling into a camp with the likes of Keen or Siegel; their views are challenging a popular, fast moving assumption with often broad derisive strokes, but they can fuel debate around a subject worthy of such discussion despite what Lee Siegel wrote yesterday on the BBC Digital Revolution blog questioning whether the documentary about the web needed to exist at all as the web is ‘an ultimately pedestrian technology that has been around for two decades’.

Disclosure: I am producing the BBC Digital Revolution blog. I’m not here to spam. We want to engage across the web in the hope that people will share their stories with us, discuss the web and the ‘revolution’ it may or may not have created (Lee Siegel, as you will see, clearly thinks not!)

Many thanks,
Dan

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