There was a website that I had quoted a long time ago. The author said something like "when the robots are taking over the world, don't panic. Buy a robot." I loved it. So I linked to it on my old blog. Then years later, I went to the source only to find that the page returned a 404. So I linked to the wayback machine instead. But then, it was removed from the archive.org. I can't even remember the name of the website at this point, just that it had the word "café" in it.

Anyway, all this to say that since there are no sources for this quote, then I'm the new original source. You can quote me on that.

https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/117370206/You-made-thisI-m...

Long ago in Seattle there was a network of BBSs and the head board was called Rat City. They had a lot of work by local artists (mostly tracker files and digital artwork IIRC).

I have not been able to find a single hint of their existence. Everything about what was once a collection of artistic works, wiped from the earth.

We really need to do a better job managing our historical legacy.

  206-246-6647
  White Center, VA RaT City BBS
  (1993-1997) Dude Renegade
  "Primarily a demoscene board with a vast collection of Impulse Tracker music and ANSI art. 
  Used to meet IRL at Seattle Center to take field recordings for use as samples. 
  Members included Dude, Catspaw, Geo, and Infamouse." - Dude

"Do you do backups too, for example to guard against corrupt data getting mirrored across both copies, or accidental deletion?"

John Gonzalez, Internet Archive infrastructure lead, replied:

"We have done experiments to confirm that we can back up large portions of our corpus... but this is not a regular practice for us at this time."

https://blog.archive.org/2016/10/25/20000-hard-drives-on-a-m...

I'll take a contrarian view and probably get downvoted for it, but many people are adamant about the benefits of indiscriminate archiving, and I just don't see it. Do we have a moral right to keep a copy of everything that's ever been written on the internet, basically just for the sake of it?

Sure, there's a variety of official and quasi-officials resources that should be treated as public record and preserved. And arguably, there are things that rise to the level of a cultural phenomenon and where the benefit of keeping receipts outweighs the jerk factor of never asking for permission and not respecting the wishes of private individuals.

But if it's some family blog from 30 years ago that's been deliberately taken down and lives on archive.org unbeknownst to the original owner? Do we have a right to that? To what end, other than "well, future historians may need it"? A historian won't look at it. A person trying to doxx you or shame you will.

In modern times, archive.org is an international treasure.

Which of course means it's facing major opposition from capital interests.

Apparently no one ever thought an incoming presidential administration would literally wipe gigabytes of government funded research results off the web.

Now we see in bold type how precarious is our democracy...

Is this the story of Johnny Rotten?