First Debate Topic: Data Retention & The Internet

The first debate topic has been chosen: Data Retention & the Internet.  It’s been something swirling around in conversations with people I know – in no congruent fashion – and seems to be coming to the fore of some people’s concerns over the future of the Tubes.  So what’s the big deal?

Without trying to pigeonhole any argument, I’ll try to give a breakdown:

Web services like Twitter, URL shortening sites, and picture posting sites leave some weary that their information may not really exist forever on the internet and that it, furthermore, won’t be archived for future generations.  This view holds that the promise of the internet lays in its ability to retain data forever, and that this is an important point to focus on when creating any new web service.

On the other side of this debate are the “who cares” people.  In other words, why does it matter that data is retained on the internet?  Their arguments are myriad, but one that seems to repeatedly come up is this: the expectation of the user is not that their data will be held forever, but that they will be able to use the service for its immediate purpose (posting pictures, sharing links, whatever).

In essence, the debate seems to come down to data.  Do we feel data retention is important to the survival of the internet?  If not, what is the great promise of the internet?

Stay tuned next week for what I hope to be a lively debate.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.