Could it? Yeah, sure it could, and in some cases it will, but only if someone up the chain thinks it's profitable. Profit motive should never dictate how archaeology is practiced.
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S
joined 1 year ago
Could it? Yeah, sure it could, and in some cases it will, but only if someone up the chain thinks it's profitable. Profit motive should never dictate how archaeology is practiced.
I mean I could just smash or burn those things, and lots of important physical artifacts were smashed and burned over the years. I don't think that easy destructability is unique to data. As far as archaeology is concerned (and I'm no expert on the matter!), the fact that the artefacts are fragile is not an unprecedented challenge. What's scary IMO is the public perception that data, especially data on the cloud, is somehow immune from eventual destruction. This is the impulse that guides people (myself included) to be sloppy with archiving our data, specifically by placing trust in the corporations that administer cloud services to keep our data as if our of the kindness of their hearts.