Posts by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
(DIR) Post #B6wFy34G1PmPwFSgU4 by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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2/3 Mechner recounts discovering that even major archives can vanish, forcing creators to rely on enthusiasts and chance discoveries to recover lost history.When “historical oblivion is the default, not the exception,” what survives is often what individuals decide to save, not what institutions guarantee.
(DIR) Post #B6wFy4k7nErd8O3dNg by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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3/3 Today, games, magazines, and digital works can disappear overnight, taking decades of creative history with them.Mechner argues that archivists, libraries, and preservation networks are essential to keeping cultural memory alive.Read Mechner's essay and much more in VANISHING CULTURE.📖 Download & read: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/🛒 Purchase in print: https://betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/vanishing-culture-a-report-on-our-fragile-cultural-record-9798995425014/new#VanishingCulture #InternetArchive #GameHistory #DigitalPreservation @jmechner
(DIR) Post #B6yP9sNGoxYbkVaSsi by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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AI companies keep promising world-changing futures while struggling with very present-tense problems like accuracy, labor, energy use, and trust.Policy researcher Caroline De Cock joins Glyn Moody to unpack why AI hype is a feature of the industry’s business model — and who it serves — in AI TOOLS, NOT GODS on the Future Knowledge #podcast. 🎧 Listen & subscribe 👉 https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/AI-tools-not-gods#AI #Tech #informationlabs.org @glynmoody @AuthorsAlliance
(DIR) Post #B6zeZtv5CxqmuUQuw4 by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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❤️ Love the Wayback Machine? Some publishers and news organizations are blocking it from archiving journalism—cutting off access to the public record and future accountability.Want to tell them to stop blocking web archiving? ✍️ Sign the open letter to support keeping journalism preserved in the Wayback Machine ⤵️https://www.savethearchive.com/NewsLeaders@fight #SaveTheArchive #DigitalArchive #WaybackMachine #TruthMatters
(DIR) Post #B7ShnBhz7hrlV8chRQ by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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🧵1️⃣/2️⃣ Thousands of educational filmstrips are deteriorating faster than they can be digitized. 🎞️Archivist Mark O’Brien explains why preserving these overlooked materials has become a race against time and why they remain an invaluable record of 20th century American culture.📚 Read O’Brien’s essay in VANISHING CULTURE from the Internet Archive.🔗 https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/108/
(DIR) Post #B7ShnBwsELmAFJaaeG by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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2️⃣/2️⃣ Filmstrips document how generations of Americans learned, worked, communicated, and understood the world around them. Preserving them means saving a unique historical record before more of it disappears.Find O'Brien's essay and more in the Vanishing Culture report.📖 Download & read: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/108/🛒 Purchase in print: https://betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/vanishing-culture-a-report-on-our-fragile-cultural-record-9798995425014/new@uncommonephemera #VanishingCulture #FilmPreservation #DigitalPreservation #Archives #CulturalHeritage #InternetArchive
(DIR) Post #B861s18tvTJLCOHyO8 by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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🌐 The web changes every day. Too much of it disappears. 🕳️Nearly 40% of URLs that existed just 10 years ago are no longer available on the live web.The Internet Archive's Mark Graham & Chris Freeland discuss why preserving our digital record can't be an afterthought.Read the full interview 🔗 https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/who-will-save-the-internet-from-disappearing@internetarchive @mark
(DIR) Post #B8JRdoH9fSwuKT4urQ by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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More and more of our culture now exists only in digital form … but libraries can’t preserve what they don’t own.As books 📚, music 🎵, film 🎞️, and news 📰 shift from ownership to licensing, long-term access is becoming harder to guarantee. Current Affairs Magazine talks with @internetarchive’s Mark Graham and Chris Freeland.Full interview 🔗 https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/who-will-save-the-internet-from-disappearing
(DIR) Post #B8gKAw97Nx2oX0burI by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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📚 Culture doesn’t have to be censored to disappear. 🕳️Sometimes all it takes is an expired license. 📼💿In THE POLITICAL THREATS OF VANISHING CULTURE AND THE NEED TO PROTECT OUR FUTURE MEMORY, Michael Menna and Lila Bailey argue that preserving our shared memory has become one of the defining political challenges of the digital age. 🏛️📖 Read or download the paper ⬇️https://journals.library.wustl.edu/pollib/article/id/9287/#VanishingCulture #memoryhole
(DIR) Post #B9H4CE1GoNPJsopcQK by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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Builders: here’s a chance to make something new from a massive public archive.Internet Archive Canada is offering a $5,000 fellowship to build new tools using 22M+ pages of open Canadian government publications.Applications close Aug. 21 → https://bc-ai.ca/fellowship
(DIR) Post #B9X9egXnuH5vWIFL9M by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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Most printed ephemera wasn't intended to last.Writer & book artist Eve Scarborough shares what she's learned cataloging type ephemera at Letterform Archive, where fragile paper goods preserve the fingerprints, doodles, & traces of the people who made and used them.📚 Read or download "Type Ephemera: Lessons in Endearment" in VANISHING CULTURE:https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/63/🧵
(DIR) Post #B9X9ekXx1faZvuLVw0 by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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VANISHING CULTURE explores why preserving our fragile cultural record matters, including the everyday objects history often overlooks. ✍️🗂️🛒 Want a copy on your bookshelf? Purchase in print:https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/vanishing-culture-a-report-on-our-fragile-cultural-record-9798995425014/new#VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #InternetArchive @letterformarchive #bookstodon
(DIR) Post #B9k8VWLEVjv0aCKS5w by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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We've been getting a lot of questions about how the Internet Archive digitizes books.The short answer: page by page, by hand.You may remember our viral 2021 video of Eliza Zhang scanning a book. That's still how we do it.Meet Eliza, and learn how we scan books: https://blog.archive.org/2021/02/09/meet-eliza-zhang-book-scanner-and-viral-video-star/
(DIR) Post #B9o8Xe9XZi558wtjNI by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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What if the rules meant to stop AI scraping also stopped us from saving the web?The future of the open web is being debated this week in a conference room in London.How can you help? Get informed ⤵️ https://cdt.org/insights/will-the-open-internet-survive-the-war-on-bots-mapping-the-debate-over-ai-preferences/
(DIR) Post #B9sIMvLB6iwTRFhsNU by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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The Internet Archive isn't just a place to find things.You can:🔖 Save something before it disappears.🔎 Discover something you didn't know existed.✍️ Improve or contribute to a collection.🤝 Connect with people doing the work of preservation.Over the next eight weeks, we'll show you how.SAVE. DISCOVER. CONTRIBUTE. CONNECT.➡️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/ #ToolsYouCanUse
(DIR) Post #B9zn5gHAKZu3z86xm4 by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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Flash was once the playground of the web: games, animations & experiments made by anyone with an idea. 💻 Preserving those creations helps recover a lost chapter of culture.In “Why Preserve Flash?”, Internet Archive archivist Jason Scott explores why Flash matters & why its preservation is vital.📖 Download & read, FREE from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/141/🧵
(DIR) Post #B9zn5lT31pNY5Qi1UO by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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2️⃣/2️⃣ "Flash is everywhere, and nowhere," writes Scott. "But thanks to the Archive's emulation, Flash lives again."#VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory
(DIR) Post #BA78ymjrGkbTd4beE4 by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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🧩 A math puzzle. 🚗 A solar car. 🌪️ Natural-disaster insurance. ⚡ Electricity oversupply in Kyushu.These were four very different questions put to ClimateGPT 4.3, a specialized climate model, during a recent Internet Archive tour. The results were a mix of useful answers, wrong turns & outright refusals.📖 Learn more about the experiment ➡️ https://erasmus.ai/?p=875
(DIR) Post #BASGSuTBnRB37Ay1iq by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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GIFs became a defining part of the early web, including the ubiquitous “under construction” signs that marked unfinished pages. JD Shadel looks at what these fleeting images can teach us about preserving digital culture before it disappears. 📚 Read 'What Early Internet Era GIFs Show Us About Preserving Digital Culture' in VANISHING CULTURE from the Internet Archive📖 Download & read, FREE: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/159/#Bookstodon #VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #InternetArchive
(DIR) Post #BAerhA39X05hbF0Nns by internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org
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Government records are part of the public record, but digital information can be difficult to preserve, find, and use.The Internet Archive has received an IMLS grant to develop ATLAS, a national program supporting preservation and access to local and state government information. The project will train 100 government and partner institutions and build new resources for the field.Learn more 👉 https://blog.archive.org/2026/09/10/atlasimls/