Reading list
Shortform reading
This is an incomplete list of the shortform reading (and listening and watching) I’ve been doing lately.
The U.S. Government is Erasing Our History
And document it we must, because in addition to the removal of words now considered too “woke” to be published, entire government websites are being gutted or disappearing entirely. This should concern every US-American, regardless of political party or ideology. When I say the government is erasing our history, that “our” applies to all of us.
Announcing the Data.gov Archive
Today we released our archive of data.gov on Source Cooperative. The 16TB collection includes over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov. It will be updated daily as new datasets are added to data.gov.
This is the first release in our new data vault project to preserve and authenticate vital public datasets for academic research, policymaking, and public use.
We’ve built this project on our long-standing commitment to preserving government records and making public information available to everyone. Libraries play an essential role in safeguarding the integrity of digital information. By preserving detailed metadata and establishing digital signatures for authenticity and provenance, we make it easier for researchers and the public to cite and access the information they need over time.
What happens when the internet disappears?
The promise of the internet is that it would last forever. But that has proven to be largely untrue, as huge swaths of the web are vanishing, quickly and at random.
The critical window of shadow libraries
How can we claim to preserve our collections in perpetuity, when they are already approaching 1 PB?
One Practical Thing: Protect Information
The enemy of control is information. Book bans (historically book burning), data purges, the wiping of websites and logs are all common acts by those who seek to re-write and overwrite a history that does not support their actions.
Knowledge, history, community discourse and our recorded narratives are all critical elements to a free and participatory society.
Inside Iron Mountain: It's Time to Talk About Hard Drives
By Steve Harvey. Iron Mountain sounds the alarm: Aging tracks created through an all-digital workflow aren't guaranteed to play back.
DDoSecrets Mirrors Wikileaks Data After Assange Plea Deal
Distributed Denial of Secrets, the de facto heir to Wikileaks, has now mirrored data Wikileaks previously published to ensure it stays available.
The Internet is a Series of Webs
The future core of a internet humane internet, if we are going to be able to use it to do the essential work of surviving this century, is a series of linked routes that stick us all together and supports our communities.
This is what the internet needs to accomplish. How to we make that happen? How do we improve not just our telecommunication platform but leverage it towards a better world for all participants?