2300 years ago, the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill one of humanity’s most audacious goals: to collect all the knowledge in the world under one roof. In its prime, the Library of Alexandria [1]housed an unprecedented number of scrolls yet vanished in a catastrophic fire.
Information is valuable. Modern humans always seek for permanent approaches to preserve it, yet facing some obstacles:
- The internet is constantly evolving, data is mutable, which are not ideal for storing information in a fixed way.
- A worrying amount of knowledge is stored on ephemeral media: hard drives, CDs, backup tapes who’s notional 30-year lifespans assume strictly controlled heat and humidity. Data longevity [2] is greatly dependent on the materiality of the medium (Dolgin, E., 2018)[3].
Nobody wants to witness another catastrophe like the vanish of Library of Alexandria. With the mission of preserving open source software in a fixed offline format and keep it secure for future generations, GitHub Arctic World Archive (AWA) is launched.
The AWA is located in a decommissioned coal mine in the Svalbard, Norway. GitHub will capture a snapshot of every active public repository on 02/02/2020 and preserve that data in the Arctic Code Vault.
What is GitHub?
Open source was seen as a fringe idea. Big companies kept their code secret, only hippies shared code and give it away for free. Today, over 40 million people use GitHub to create applications with open source. It’s essential to protect it from terrorist hackers, electromagnetic pulses, and other unforeseen disasters.
How is 1000-year Storage Possible?
The AWA, “modern-day Library of Alexandria”, located in the world’s northernmost town Svalbard, is a very-long-term archive 250 metres deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain. Global warming is not expected to threaten the stability of its structure.
Where to Store & Retrieve Information?
Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub, checking information film reels catagorized by nationalities 
Slogan on the wall inside the AWA
Images ource: Bloomberg Businessweek
Information is stored on high-resolution film. The film allows you to encode information in machine-readable formats. When retrieving, you are required to send a request. Once authorised, AWA will set up an online machine that sends you a link to what you requested, or ship the data on physical medium.
Pace Layers (Brand, S 2018)[4]: the Flexible, Durable Three-tier Storage Solution
Imagine 30 years ago, people might think it insane if you tell them that in 2020, human civilisation will depend and run on open source code. But here we are, in the age of Anthropocene where we are about to hit the ceiling of the biophysical capacity of planet earth, making sure we restore our ways of digital life. Besides constantly thinking of the endgame of Anthropocene, it is worth looking at the pathways to prevent human digital civilisation from extinction.
Data Resiliency[5] as an Instance:
The journey from recovery management to resilience management, is not only about technological change, but also cultural change: the goal is to deliver resilient services that are not just available, but also mitigates the impacts of cyberattacks, that can sustain a level of data integrity and continuity over a massive ecosystem infrastructure, and can also become agile, in terms of a just-in-time provisioning model (Anon, 2017)[6].
With an optimistic nihilism[7] mindset, let’s hope the AWA remains a time capsule, that our kids will never have to access.
Hashtags: #Materiality #Digital Archive #Data Restore #Data Protection #Data Resiliency #Data Longevity #Open Source #Anthropocene
References
[1] Library of Alexandria, 2019. Available from <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Library-of-Alexandria>. [3rd Jan, 2020].
[2] Data storage lifespans: How long will media really last? 2019. Available from <https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/>. [3rd Jan, 2020].
[3] Dolgin, E., 2018. Longevity data hint at no natural limit on lifespan. Nature, 559(7712), pp.14–15.
[4] Brand, S. 2018. Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning. Journal of Design and Science. https://doi.org/10.21428/7f2e5f08
[5] Balancing Data Resiliency with Data Recovery. Available from <https://www.flexential.com/knowledge-center/balancing-data-resiliency-data-recovery>. [3rd Jan, 2020].
[6] Anon, 2017. US Patent Issued to Parallel Machines on Jan. 17 for “Data resiliency in a shared memory pool” (Israeli Inventor). US Fed News Service, Including US State News, pp.US Fed News Service, Including US State News, Jan 19, 2017.
[7] Optimistic Nihilism. 2017 (video file). Available from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14&app=desktop>. [3rd Jan, 2020].
anthropology of infrastructure 2019 