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The digital apocalypse -

For many years, experts have argued that the rapid deterioration of the internet would cause problems for the planet’s future. This so-called “digital apocalypse” appears to be looming ever closer, and may actually be on our doorstep.

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The beginning of the end -

Earlier in 2024, Google decided to discontinue its URL shortener service, which used to create concise, user-friendly versions of links to websites. As these shortened links go offline, vast web content becomes unreachable, which is only the beginning of a widespread digital disappearance.

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Disappearing web histories -

As digital archives vanish, our online history also erodes. Links and online sites will slowly shut down, and the entire web’s historical record would practically disappear.

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Social networks -

Social networks and digital journalism sites will also disappear, leaving articles and info pages unrecoverable. The growing trend of link rot (where URLs fail) contributes to the breakdown of accessible online information, which will only worsen over time.

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The vanishing cloud -

The internet has essentially become the default archive where history and culture is stored. The cloud (where most people store their pictures and valuable information) could also disappear when servers shut down.

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Library of Alexandria -

Similar to the way the Library of Alexandria burnt down in 48 BCE and much knowledge from the ancient world was lost, the disappearance of digital archives would see the internet crumble in the same fashion. The potential for historical loss is enormous, and humankind is moving to a point where our records will be no more.

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Quantifying digital decay -

Studies paint a bleak picture: half of the hyperlinks in US Supreme Court cases now fail, and nearly 25% of the 2.2 million hyperlinks to New York Times articles are broken. And this problem is spreading across the web.

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Cultural memory under threat -

Digital content has replaced traditional archives, which has made the internet our primary repository of culture and memory. When the internet dies, it erases parts of our shared history and affects how we understand ourselves.

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Old media vs. new loss -

While libraries preserve physical newspapers, books, and films, many online archives are lost since they do not have physical places where they store information. Today, finding defunct digital articles or videos is often impossible.

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Deleted entertainment archives -

Online entertainment archives (including shows on MTV and Comedy Central) have vanished due to changes in ownership. Even popular sites like Cartoon Network, Yahoo Groups, and Friendster are gone, which has erased decades of digital culture.

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Vanished gaming history -

Games designed for outdated systems are now lost memories. With no way to access them, gaming history disappears. Humanity is becoming crudely aware of the vulnerability of digital-only media.

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Fragile digital storage -

Hard drives don’t live forever. Those used by the music industry in the 1990s before the digital world developed are now falling apart.

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Personal data -

Personal photos, emails, and digital records stored on old devices are often irretrievable, since they aren’t compatible with later technology. As these devices fail, memories and personal history are forever lost.

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The Wayback Machine -

In 1996, the Wayback Machine was created, which collects and saves digital copies of web pages. It is now owned by the Internet Archive, with a man named Mark Graham at the helm as director. The Wayback Machine is one of the last centurions fighting to protect digital culture.

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Endangered digital histories -

The Wayback Machine automatically archives more than a billion URLs daily. And its work is important. In 2017, the Machine archived about 5,000 videos from a YouTube channel run by Rohingya activists, who were subjected to genocide.

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Paywalls -

The Wayback Machine is often hindered by paywalls on scholarly and news articles. Most research and journalism (which is often publicly funded) is gated, and many future generations might not even know of their existence as the internet falls apart.

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Artificial Intelligence -

AI also poses as a new threat to the internet. Many sites now block access from both AI and digital archivists. This barrier to digital preservation risks erasing history and inadvertently speeding up the digital dark age.

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Cultural memory -

Archives do more than preserve information; they define societal memory. Losing this record risks cultural amnesia, making it harder to understand our past, as essential elements of human history fade.

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Corporate ownership -

Corporations (which often value profit over preservation) control most of the web, and they are less likely to responsibly preserve digital records indefinitely.

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A selfie’s role in science -

Even photographs and selfies are at risk. Fifteen years ago, a researcher named Loren McClenachan conducted a study to see whether fish were becoming smaller. It turns out that the physical photographs people took of their catches was the solution to this study. This would be impossible with today’s digital-only photo storage.

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Shifting baseline syndrome -

When records vanish, a condition known as “shifting baseline syndrome” arises. Without available data, people assume that whatever is normal for today was normal in the past as well.

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Corporate control -

When people rely on devices to store personal memories, it means that companies control their history. Corporate priorities (not cultural preservation) are what dictate the fate of data, which puts people’s personal and historical memory at risk.

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Self-inflicted erasure -

Our choice to rely on digital devices leads to self-imposed cultural amnesia. By storing lives and histories online without durable backups, society is effectively choosing to forget its past.

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Dark Ages -

Just as the early medieval Dark Ages saw limited historical records for 500 years, the Digital Dark Age could erase modern knowledge. Society may very well become a forgotten chapter in human history.

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Locked out -

The internet is also rife with sites that do not freely provide a look into their programming. Platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter) once allowed users to dive into their interfaces to do research on public health and natural disaster response. Now, this is impossible.

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Elections -

Even elections are at risk of being consumed by the Digital Dark Age. Social media platforms were once used as “observatories” to independently monitor for evidence of manipulation. But changes in data access (as well as the rise of AI) has made this difficult.

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Society’s diminishing footprint -

A post-literate society leaves very little for future generations. If modern culture remains confined to digital technology, future archaeologists may find an absence of information that is comparable to preliterate societies.

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Preservation -

The biggest step to preventing a Digital Dark Age is to make regular backups of data onto multiple easily copied devices (such as external hard drives), even if the data is nothing more than personal pictures and media.

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Hard copies -

Better yet, hard copies that don’t rely on digital formats are infinitely superior. The act of storing memories and history in physical form would prove fruitful if (or when) the internet comes crashing down.

Sources: (Business Insider) (Wired)

See also: The biggest internet outages in history

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