Will be blogs and journals and internet forums.
Arguably the internet is already an archive. But without an order or a preservation strategy in place it is not an archive in the traditional sense.
The diary as a secret place for ones own thoughts was a twentieth century phenomenon. As we know, prior to the 19th century diaries were only really kept by important business people and such like (of course there are notable exceptions!), but in Victorian Britain it was not unusual for women to write diaries for their husbands.
In the archive world, diaries and personal letters were not really considered important enough for preservation until the late 19th century (the juiciest stuff we have was usually kept by fortunate accident). .. Likewise, there has been a similar lag in the recognition of the cultural value of the blog. Now, we have to work out how the hell to preserve these things, with all their links and structural features in tact, for a computer, which might not even be a computer, to read in 300 years time.
You may say, why not just leave these things up to chance? But what are the chances of saving, say, an email by accident for more than about 4 years?
Show me any 17th century letter, however dull, and I will find something of fascination in it, whether it be the handwriting, the content, the paper or the turn of phrase. It would be such a shame if the meaningless ramblings of the early 21st century were not preserved for keen 24th century eyes.
I, for one, like looking over my posts from a year ago, as I like laughing at the diary I kept as a 17 year old. They may be of no interest to anyone else but that doesnt matter cos blogs are not meant to be interesting to anyone else (at least not yet).
19-Dec-05 at 7:15 pm | Permalink
Excellent post.
You might be interested in the project at archive.org where they are, in fact, archiving the whole web.
So you might like to go back in time to early 2003 when TF was fronted by a Mondrian, for example.
19-Dec-05 at 7:47 pm | Permalink
I once had to give a talk on “Mondrian and Theosophy”. Those colours don’t just mean nothing you know. The guy was nutty but rather interesting.
19-Dec-05 at 8:15 pm | Permalink
Can I just point out that isn’t a background image by the way. Painstakingly measured out in CSS. Those were the days.
20-Dec-05 at 10:41 pm | Permalink
>CSS
quite beyond me yet I’m afraid. Technocretin.
Ha, ha I signed up for myspace today. That place is scary!! I don’t have any friends yet.
20-Dec-05 at 10:45 pm | Permalink
I also realised I don’t have a photo of myself taken in the past five years so I’ll have to make do with the trusted cartoon me.