轉自：Nature自然科研

哲學園鳴謝

原文作者：Sedeer el-Showk

越來越多的全球文化只存在於網路上，這對那些記錄世界歷史的人來說是一大挑戰。

2017年8月，颶風哈維橫掃加勒比海，之後在德克薩斯州和路易斯安那州南部登陸。這場颶風導致100多人死亡，僅在美國就造成了約1250億美元的損失。

隨著災後恢復工作的啟動，休斯頓萊斯大學的研究人員和檔案保管員聯合休斯頓公共圖書館、休斯敦哈里斯郡公共圖書館和休斯頓大學圖書館，開始著手製作此次颶風的電子資料庫。

谷歌等企業會儲存海量數據。

來源：Google Cloud

來自受災社區的大量照片、視頻、音頻以及災難回憶被發到了社交媒體上，但我們並不能保證後世的人也能看到它們。參與上述計劃的萊斯大學的歷史學家Caleb McDaniel 說：「不願意看到這些信息丟失，也不願意使用未來的人無法獲取或無法讀取的方式儲存它們。」

哈維記憶計劃（Harvey Memories Project）旨在將這些信息分門別類，永久地記錄下來，以便保存受災民眾對颶風的記憶，為後來的歷史學家和其他研究者所用。該計劃於7月啟動，目前已記錄了數百份資料，但是該團隊希望可以增加到數萬份。

哈維記憶計劃凸顯了一個日益嚴峻的問題：我們的文化體驗大多記載在轉瞬即逝的技術中。每天，數以億計的照片被上傳到社交媒體上，而在我們的文化輸出（如模因、貓咪圖片、推特、播客和教育視頻）中，越來越多的內容只存在於網路上。

想要記錄這些電子材料，則面臨著技術、法律和社會方面的挑戰。而其中大多數信息掌控在私有企業，如臉書和谷歌手裡，這就讓問題愈發嚴重了。對那些想要保存文化遺產的人來說，這些問題相當棘手。

牛津大學互聯網學院數字倫理實驗室的研究者Carl ?hman說： 「我們必須探討一下，應該採用什麼樣的價值觀和準則來指導歷史記錄，是代際公平，科學，宗教，還是商業準則？」

真實還原

一群來自不同學科的專家正在商討解決這些問題的方法。本月早些時候，國際互聯網保存聯盟（International Internet Preservation Consortium）在紐西蘭召開了年度網站存檔會議（Web Archiving Conference）。與會者來自各種各樣的學科背景，他們共同商議保存世界在線遺產所面臨的社會和技術障礙。議題包括研發用於收集在線媒體數據的新工具，以及處理跨國平台時遇到的困難。

檔案保管員遇到的一大技術難點就是選擇能夠經得住時間考驗的儲存介質。正如軟盤會消失，光碟也越來越少見，記憶卡和U盤一類的現代儲存介質也可能被更新的技術取代。磁碟和硬碟最終也會由於理化性質老化而報廢。

為了保障介質損壞或技術過時情況下的數據獲取，檔案保管員需要定期將數據轉移到新的儲存媒介中。但是每次數據轉移都可能發生錯誤。為了找到這些錯誤，檔案保管員會在拷貝原始文件之前生成一種「數字指紋」（digital finger-print），也叫哈希值。

數字指紋這種字元串對原始文件來說是獨一無二的，因此可被用於校驗拷貝是否和源文件相同。如果文件在拷貝的過程中發生了變化，那麼哈希值就不再匹配，檔案保管員就會被提示重新再複製一次。

有時候，為了保存數字對象，需要故意對其進行修改。比如，去掉音頻錄音文件里的雜訊。即便如此，檔案保管員也需要儘可能地保存原始主文件。

紐西蘭國家圖書館的數字保存團隊主管Steve Knight說：「維護數字原版的一個原因是，二三十年後，可能會出現某種新技術，讓我們能夠以現在無法想像的方式讀取原版文件。」檔案保管員採用各種各樣的設備和技術來保護原版文件，比如防寫裝置就可以防止計算機在連接的硬碟上寫入數據。

由於軟體和文件格式變化速度快，這些硬體問題愈發告急。在現代設備上通過複製已過時的軟體來讀取特定格式的文件不是不可能，但是如果對源文件格式或軟體所知不多，那就需要耗費大量的搜索查證工作。

2013年，卡耐基梅隆大學的計算機俱樂部花了幾個月的時間做逆向工程，終於從流行藝術家安迪·沃霍爾（Andy Warhol）的Amiga軟盤中恢復了一些隱藏的圖片文件，得以複製沃霍爾著名的湯罐和其他數字實驗作品。修復後，這些文件可以被轉換為現代格式或標準格式，但是源文件的一些屬性或其中包含的信息可能會丟失，比如照片拍攝地點的元數據。

最終的技術挑戰在於，要確保未來的學者能夠調用數據來源。和傳統人工製品相比，數字對象更容易被篡改。不過，拷貝文件時所採用的檢驗和保護工具讓檔案保管員可以防止或偵測惡意篡改。Knight表示說：「數字對象的完整性和真實性是數字保存工作的核心。」

聯通各處

如果國家圖書館的目的是保存一個國家的記憶，是提供Knight口中的「和未來聯通的通訊線路」，那麼就必須有一種機制讓圖書館可以獲取資料。許多國家針對書籍和期刊等紙媒出台了法律條款，要求出版商為國家圖書館提供副本。

2003年，紐西蘭成為首個要求數字對象也必須遵從呈繳制度(Legal Deposit)的國家。因此，紐西蘭國家圖書館有權對紐西蘭境內的網站以及在該國境內創造出來的其它數字材料歸檔。此外，只要受版權法保護的數據不在未經允許的情況下使用，那麼該國圖書館就能夠繞過版權保護協議保存數據。

但是，仍有許多數字材料不在此類法律的涵蓋範圍之內。最重要的是，檔案管理員想要保存的信息大多掌握在大型跨國企業的手裡，它們恐怕沒有興趣配合圖書館。

哈維記憶計劃旨在保存來自公眾的關於颶風哈維的圖像、視頻和個人故事。

來源：Arun Chaudhary/哈維記憶計劃

Knight舉例說，大多數由紐西蘭人製作的音樂儲存在Bandcamp等在線平台上，這些平台沒有動力把音頻文件呈繳到國家圖書館裡。社交媒體以及其他在線服務的跨國性質意味著「許多行為實際上發生在境外，涉及國家機構應該如何建造和維護本國的數字歷史記錄時，不免出現各種法律、社會和文化問題」。

不同國家的圖書館本可以通過合作，跨越國境障礙。但是法律差異使得這種方法也行不通。比如，不同的國家對呈繳制度所涵蓋的材料有不同的規定；有關誹謗、淫穢和瀆神的法律規定也不盡相同。

如果人們在國外旅遊的時候在線發布圖片和文字，這對國家圖書館來說就是另一個呈繳難題了。不同國家的呈繳制度不同，它們並不總是允許搜集本國國民在國外發布的數字材料。因此，國家圖書館有時候可能需要確定所涉數字材料是在國內發布的還是在國外發布的，這就讓材料收集過程變得極為繁雜。Knight建議，檔案保管員應該大膽行動，先斬後奏。

公司和個人所發布的數字信息的體量也加大了收集工作的難度。2010年，美國國會圖書館和推特達成了一項協議，美國國會圖書館可以將該公司於2006年成立之日起的所有推特內容歸檔。

2013年，美國國會圖書館宣布收集了2006-2010年間的所有推特，並且建立了一套管理後續推特流的程序。當時每天都會產生近5億條推特。但是美國國會圖書館最近修改了它的收集政策：從2018年初開始，它將有選擇性地收集推特信息，因為推文、照片和視頻的數量持續攀升。在找到低成本的檢索方法之前，目前該圖書館較為有限的推特檔案是禁止公開的。

美國國會圖書館按照該館的一般館藏指南，挑選要歸檔的推特信息，也就是著重保存和國家利益相關事件的材料。但是，這種做法就引發了一些疑問，如哪些資料應當作為國家記憶被保存。數字技術應當更關注少數群體或是邊緣群體的呼聲，但是這種多樣性並沒有一直得到維護。國家圖書館並不是完全中立的資料庫。無論是有意還是無意，對於館藏信息的篩選反映了社會的不平等和偏見。

私人問題

國家圖書館被迫要做出艱難的選擇，而社交媒體公司有能力在它們的數據中心裡儲存我們的海量私人數字信息。但是，這些公司並不是為了公共圖書館才儲存這些海量信息，而是因為保存用戶的信息有利可圖，即使用戶亡故也一樣。

只要死者的賬戶還能引起親友的注意，讓他們有所行動，那麼死者依然有商業價值。關於該如何處理用戶死後的賬戶，臉書和谷歌各自有相應的政策，用戶可以自行選擇。死者賬戶可以保存圖書館不保存的信息，但是它們能存留多久取決於它們的商業價值。

數字遺產的管理還催生了一系列新的法律問題。英國阿斯頓大學的媒體和隱私法高級講師 Edina Harbinja說：「現行的解決方案並不完整，有時會引發問題。」比如，它們可能會和遺囑或遺產法發生衝突。她說：「某個朋友可能是谷歌或臉書服務的遺產受益人，但是他們不是能夠繼承死者財產版權的繼承人或近親。」如果死者賬戶里包含受版權保護的內容，那麼就會產生混亂。

不同國家的隱私法和繼承法也各有不同，這可能進一步使相關政策的解釋和執行變得複雜。Harbinja認為這些問題將推動形成一個更完善的「社交媒體遺囑」系統，因為數字遺產相關法律會不斷發展，在理想的情況下，不同國家之間的法律差異能得到調和。

儘管做出了諸多努力，我們的數字遺產依舊命運多舛。2012年，一名15歲的德國女孩被地鐵撞擊身亡。她的父母想要取得她的臉書賬戶的完整訪問權，因為這樣可以寄託他們的哀思。不僅如此，他們也希望可以從中找到線索，以了解女兒是不是因為遭遇網路霸凌而自殺。2015年的一審判決把賬戶判給了他們，但是對方上訴，2017年一審判決被推翻。這場爭議的核心是，女孩和臉書的協議是否像書信日記那樣可由其父母繼承，另外這種繼承是否違反隱私法。

2018年7月，德國聯邦最高法院判定這對父母可以擁有女兒的賬戶，即社交媒體賬戶的繼承應遵循和書信相同的原則。但Harbinja對這個判決表示不服，她認為德國聯邦最高法院忽視了一些基本的倫理問題。她認為不管在什麼條件下，和臉書籤訂的協議純粹是私人的，而隱私權在本人身故之後依然有效。

此外，授予繼承人訪問賬戶的權利使他們能夠查看死者生前與其聯繫人私下分享的信息，這就觸犯了隱私法。Harbinja 告訴澳大利亞廣播公司，「網路上的自我和身份代表遠比信件和照片複雜。」她認為處理方式應該因人而異，不應該一刀切。

除了法律問題，數字遺產的商業化管理意味著，死者數字遺產的使用將受到利益的驅使。這可能導致數字遺產被當成商品銷售，死者親屬的悲痛被人利用（見「數字永生」）。

牛津大學數字倫理實驗室的?hman 和 Luciano Floridi倡導將數字遺產視為物理遺產的延伸，「數據不僅僅是我們擁有的物品，比如一輛車，還是我們身體的一部分，如同我們的胳膊一樣。如果有人侵犯我們的隱私，那麼我們失去的不是一件物品，而是對我們身份的控制，是尊嚴。因此，如果說我們的隱私權能在我們不知情的情況下被侵犯，在我們死後它也同樣可能被侵犯。」

數字永生

當你死後，對你的數字遺產的處理將不可避免地引發尊嚴和商業開發相關的問題。傳統的社交媒體公司至多把死者的個人頁面變成緬懷頁面，但類似於Eternime 和 Eter9 的「數字來世」初創公司則提供更加大膽的服務。

在被授權訪問你的社交媒體賬戶後，它們的演算法會分析你的照片、鏈接、發布的文字和人際互動數據，然後據此創造你的「虛擬人」——可以和你的親友互動的數字分身。雖然這些服務尚未上線，但是已有數萬人訂購，這說明數字永生極具吸引力。

倫理學家對這些數字分身可能引發的倫理困境發出了警告。牛津大學數字倫理實驗室的Carl ?hman認為，「如果公司之間爭相『消費』死者，那麼左右我們對死者的記憶的就只會是利益，而不是公正、歷史價值、情感價值等，除非後面這些倫理原則正好合消費者的心意。」

這些網站的聊天機器人也可能逐漸偏離本人的真實樣貌。經濟利益可能驅使這些公司根據商業目標控制聊天機器人，他們可能無意真實地還原死者。例如，由於參與度在社交媒體上是一種極為重要的商業指標，因此聊天機器人可能會比本人更加外向健談。

因為這些擔憂，?hman認為數字來世公司應該確保做到以下幾點：第一，消費者清楚在自己百年後，自己的數據將被如何呈現出來；第二，聊天機器人的人設不會和本人相差太大；第三，用戶只能上傳自己的數據，而不能上傳親友的數據用於製造數字分身。

隨著我們的生活和數字通訊關係越來越緊密，我們選擇保留什麼材料以及如何管理這些材料，將在我們的文化遺產形成中發揮越來越大的作用。颶風來襲後，記錄社交媒體帖子似乎無關緊要，但是這背後的動機和一百年前的圖書館收集製作剪報和一手情報的活動是一樣的，它們都可以增加我們對災害的認識。新技術帶來了新挑戰，但是鮮有人會質疑保留可能轉瞬即逝的記錄的重要性。

原文以Saving the digital world為標題

發布在2018年11月28日的Nature Outlook上

Sedeer el-Showk

OUTLOOK

28 NOVEMBER 2018

Saving the digital world

A growing proportion of global culture exists only online, presenting a challenge to those tasked with maintaining the historical record.

Corporations such as Google store enormous amounts of data. Credit: Google Cloud

PDF version

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey swept through the Caribbean before making landfall in southern Texas and Louisiana. It led to more than 100 deaths and caused an estimated US$125 billion of damage in the United States alone. As recovery efforts began, researchers and archivists from Rice University in Houston, Texas, together with the Houston Public Library, Harris County Public Library in Houston, and the University of Houston Libraries, set out to create what they describe as a digital memory bank of the storm.

Numerous photos, videos, audio clips and stories from affected communities had already been posted on social media, but there were no guarantees that they would remain available for posterity. 「You don』t want all that stuff to get lost and never preserved or archived in a way that future generations can access and learn from,」 said Caleb McDaniel, a historian at Rice University who is part of the project.

Part of Nature Outlook: Digital revolution

The Harvey Memories Project aims to process and catalogue this material in a permanent archive, preserving the communities』 experience of the hurricane for historians and other researchers. The archive launched in July and already houses hundreds of records, but the team hopes to save tens of thousands.

The Harvey Memories Project highlights a growing problem: much of our cultural experience is now mediated by ephemeral technologies. Hundreds of millions of photos are uploaded to social media every day, and an ever-growing portion of our cultural output, from memes and cat pictures to tweets, podcasts and educational videos, exists only online. Archiving these digital materials poses a host of technical, legal and social challenges, many of which are exacerbated by the fact that much of the material is in the hands of private corporations such as Facebook and Google. These challenges raise important questions for anyone concerned with preserving our cultural heritage.

「We must start talking about what values and principles we want to guide the curation of historical records: generational justice, scientific, religious, commercial,」 says Carl ?hman, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute』s Digital Ethics Lab in Oxford, UK.

Playing safe

A cross-disciplinary array of experts is working out how to address these questions. Earlier this month, the International Internet Preservation Consortium held its annual Web Archiving Conference in Wellington, New Zealand. The meeting brought people from a variety of disciplines together to discuss the social and technical obstacles to preserving the world』s online heritage. Talking points included the development of new tools for collecting online media, and the difficulties encountered when dealing with transnational platforms.

One of the technical challenges facing archivists is choosing a storage medium that will stand the test of time. Just as floppy disks disappeared and optical disks are becoming less common, modern storage media such as memory cards and USB sticks are likely to be supplanted by newer technologies. Disks and drives also eventually wear out because of physical and chemical degradation. To safeguard access to stored information in the face of decay or technological obsolescence, archivists regularly transfer data to new media. But errors can creep in with each transfer. To spot them, archivists create a 『digital finger-print』, known as a hash, before copying the original file. This string of letters and numbers is unique to that file and can therefore be used to verify that any copies are identical to the original. If the file is changed during copying, its hash will no longer match, alerting archivists to the need to try again.

In some cases, digital objects need to be deliberately modified to preserve them, for example by removing noise from an audio recording. But even then, archivists also keep the original master whenever possible.

「One of the reasons for maintaining the digital original is that in 20 or 30 years』 time there might be a mechanism where we could actually go back to the original and use it in a manner that we can』t now,」 says Steve Knight, head of the digital-preservation team at the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington. Archivists use various equipment and techniques to preserve the integrity of the original, such as write-blockers, which prevent a computer from writing to a connected hard disk.

These hardware problems are compounded by rapid changes in software and file formats. It is possible to replicate the outdated software required to view a particular type of file on modern equipment, but this can involve significant digital sleuthing if little is known about the original file format or software. In 2013, when enthusiasts at the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recovered a cache of image files from Amiga floppy disks that belonged to pop artist Andy Warhol, for example, they spent months reverse-engineering the software needed to view the images. Their effort was rewarded with a digital reproduction of Warhol』s famous soup cans and other digital experiments. Once recovered, such files can be converted into a modern or standardized format, although this might result in the loss of properties or information embedded in the original, such as metadata recording the location at which photographs were taken.

The final technical hurdle is ensuring that the provenance of the data is recorded for use by future scholars. Digital objects are more vulnerable to tampering than traditional artefacts, but the verification and preservation tools used during copying enable archivists to prevent or detect malicious manipulation. 「The integrity and authenticity of the digital object is at the root of the digital preservation endeavour,」 says Knight.

Access all areas

If national libraries are to serve as the memory of a nation and provide what Knight calls 「a communication line with the future」, there must be a mechanism to let them access the material. For printed documents such as books and periodicals, many countries have laws that require publishers to provide copies to their national libraries.

In 2003, New Zealand became one of the first countries to extend this principle of legal deposit to digital objects. This gave the National Library the right to archive websites based in New Zealand and other digital mat-erial created in the country, and allowed it to bypass copy protection to preserve the data, provided that copyrighted data are not made accessible without permission. Many digital data are beyond the scope of such laws, however. In particular, much of the information that archivists want to preserve is in the hands of large international corporations that might have little interest in cooperating with libraries.

The Harvey Memories Project is preserving the public』s images, videos and stories of Hurricane Harvey.Credit: Arun Chaudhary/Harvey Memories Project

For example, much of the music produced by New Zealanders is hosted on online platforms such as Bandcamp, says Knight, and these have little incentive to deposit their audio files with the National Library. The trans-national nature of social media and other online services means that 「a lot of those activities are effectively happening offshore」, he says. 「This brings up a whole range of not just legal issues, but also social and cultural questions around how national institutions build and protect the digital collections chronicling the history of their countries.」

Collaborative efforts between national libraries could help them reach beyond national boundaries. But these approaches can be stymied by legal differences between nations, ranging from what material is covered by legal deposit, to laws regarding libel, obscenity or blasphemy.

Libraries can also face problems with legal deposit when people publish images and text online while travelling abroad. Legal-deposit laws vary between countries and do not always authorize the collection of digital material published by its nationals outside the country. As a result, national libraries might sometimes need to determine whether a digital item was published from within the country or abroad, making the collection process inordinately complicated. Knight suggests that archivists should proceed boldly, with a mind-set of seeking forgiveness later rather than permission in advance.

The sheer quantity of digital information published by companies and individuals also makes collection difficult. In 2010, the US Library of Congress reached an agreement with Twitter that enabled it to archive every tweet since the company』s inception in 2006. The library announced in 2013 that it had collected all the tweets from 2006 to 2010 and established a process for managing the continuous incoming stream, which had grown to roughly half-a-billion tweets per day. But the library recently changed its collection policy: from the start of 2018, it started archiving tweets selectively, as a result of the continued growth in the quantity of posts and the number of images and videos being shared. Until a way can be found to provide access cost-effectively, the contents of its now more limited Twitter archive will remain under embargo.

The selection of tweets for the archive will follow the library』s general collection guidelines, which focus on preserving material related to events of national interest. However, the need to be selective raises important questions about which materials are preserved in a nation』s memory. Digital technologies should make it easier for smaller or marginalized communities to be heard, but this diversity is still not always captured. Libraries are not entirely neutral repositories of knowledge; intentionally or not,the choices made about what to preserve reflect society』s inequalities and biases.

Personal problems

Whereas libraries are forced to make difficult choices, social-media companies have the capacity to store vast quantities of our personal digital information in their data centres. These enormous private archives are not managed with the aim of preservation that guides public libraries, but they nevertheless have incentives to retain users』 data — even when the user has died.

The accounts of deceased people are commercially valuable as long as they continue to generate interest and activity from friends and family. Facebook and Google have policies that enable users to determine how their account should be managed after their death. These memorials might help to preserve material that is not kept by libraries, but their longevity is dependent on their commercial value.

The management of digital remains creates a new set of legal questions. 「These in-service solutions are partial and sometimes problematic,」 says Edina Harbinja, a senior lecturer in media and privacy law at Aston University in Birmingham, UK. For example, they might clash with a will or inheritance laws. 「A friend can be a beneficiary for Google or Facebook services, but they would not be heirs and next-of-kin who would inherit copyright on one』s assets,」 she explains, leading to confusion if the account contains copyrighted material.

More from Nature Outlooks

The laws governing privacy and succession also differ between countries, and this could further complicate the interpretation and implementation of these policies. Harbinja sees them as a start towards a more comprehensive system of 『social-media wills』 as laws regarding digital remains develop and, ideally, become harmonized across nations.

Despite these efforts, the fate of our digital remains can still pose problems. In 2012, a 15-year-old German girl was killed by an underground train. Her parents asked for full access to her Facebook account — not simply a memorial site — in the hope that it would hold clues about whether her death was a suicide, perhaps resulting from online bullying. An initial court ruling in 2015 granted them access, but the decision was overturned on appeal in 2017. This debate centres on whether the girl』s contract with Facebook can be inherited by her parents in the same way as letters or a diary, and whether this would violate privacy laws.

In July 2018, Germany』s highest court ruled in favour of the parents, determining that social-media accounts should be passed on to heirs in the same way as books and letters. Harbinja disagrees with the decision, believing that the court overlooked some fundamental ethical questions. She argues that a contract with Facebook is purely personal and that the inherent right to privacy should extend beyond an individual』s death, regardless of the circumstances. Moreover, granting heirs access to an account would give them the ability to view material shared privately by contacts of the deceased person, violating the right to privacy. 「Online representations of self and identity are much more complex than one』s letters and pictures,」 Harbinja told Australian radio, advocating a nuanced approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Alongside the legal questions, the commercial management of digital remains means that their use will be driven by profit incentives. This might lead to their commodification, or the exploitation of the grief of the bereaved (see 『Digital immortality』). ?hman and Luciano Floridi, also at the Digital Ethics Lab in Oxford, advocate that digital remains should be treated as an extension of physical remains. 「Data is not merely something we own, like a car, but something we are, like an arm,」 says ?hman. 「When someone intrudes on our privacy, we don』t lose anything that we own, but we may lose control over who we are, our dignity. It follows that since our privacy can be violated without our knowledge, it can also be violated when we are dead.」

DIGITAL IMMORTALITY

When you die, the way your digital remains are handled inevitably raises questions about dignity and exploitation. Conventional social-media companies go no further than turning a profile into a memorial, but 『digital-afterlife』 start-ups such as Eternime and Eter9 offer a more ambitious alternative. Given access to your social-media accounts, their algorithms will analyse your images, links, posts and interactions to build a 『virtual you』 — a digital representation of your online persona that will eventually interact with your loved ones. Neither of these services are live yet, but tens of thousands of people have signed up, highlighting the allure of digital immortality.

Ethicists warn of moral quandaries surrounding these digital recreations. 「If firms compete in making the dead 『consumable』, our memory of the dead will be guided only by the principle of profit, and not principles of justice, historical value, sentimental value and so forth, unless such principles happen to align with what consumers want,」 says Carl ?hman of the Digital Ethics Lab in Oxford, UK.

The chatbots used by such sites might also gradually diverge from the original persona. Financial incentives could push companies to calibrate chatbots towards commercial goals that might be at odds with an honest depiction of the deceased. For example, because engagement is an important commercial metric on social media, the bots might be more extroverted or chatty than the original person.

These concerns lead ?hman to suggest that digital-afterlife companies should have to ensure that consumers know how their data will be displayed post-mortem, that users will not be depicted radically differently from the original bot, and that people can upload only their own data, not data to create a representation of friends or relatives.

As our lives become increasingly enmeshed in digital communications, questions about what we choose to preserve and how we manage those materials will play an ever-bigger part in the formation of our cultural heritage. Archiving social-media posts might seem trivial in the wake of a hurricane, but it is driven by the same motivation that made libraries collect the newspaper clippings and first-hand accounts that expand our knowledge of disasters a century ago. New technology has brought fresh challenges, but few dispute the need to preserve our otherwise ephemeral recordings.

Nature563, S144-S146 (2018)

This article is part ofNature Outlook: Digital revolution, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties.About this content.

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