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Comment by nallerooth | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much history would be lost to us if people didn't write stuff on walls. :D

I recall reading a hand-wringing article about a canyon with a lot of ancient Native American graffiti carved on the walls, and how it was in a state of crisis because modern American teenagers kept carving their own graffiti on the walls.

I don't really see how we can defend the idea that the ancient graffiti is historically valuable and it's a good thing it was left there, but the modern graffiti is a menace that needs to be stamped out.

I get the idea - the old stuff was impulsive nonsense too, of no more real value except as it illuminates how the human spirit never changes much.

But older-is-better/more important is a foundational principle of historical academics.

That's not really the idea - ancient graffiti is of vastly more value that the mere fact that someone wrote it. Ancient graffiti gives us insight into language and pronunciation (misspelling is very useful in reconstructing pronunciation), aspects of life considered taboo or otherwise unworthy of educated record (sex, usually), the lives of the comparatively poor and unimportant. It tells us about who was where, when, and doing what, in a way official records (if they exist) often don't.

Many of the things we've learned from graffiti can't be learned elsewhere. Things really would be lost to future historians if we managed to stamp out modern graffiti. Thankfully, we won't, so the question is moot.

You might as well ask why ancient cesspools are historically valuable and best left alone for archaeologists to work on, while we still clean garbage off the streets.

It's because they're old and rare. A pile of modern garbage? Not interesting. A pile of Roman garbage? That's an archaeological site.

Obviously these conversations are from the perspective of future archaeologists

If we didn't clean up the garbage and prevent the graffiti, the ancient historical garbage and graffiti wouldn't be rare, so it would be much more boring to future archæologists!

Sounds a bit like El Morro National Monument. https://www.nps.gov/elmo/index.htm

I rather wonder how the historian will make something of the many billions of selfies, mindless tweets and click bait articles that our civilisation produces and that will likely be stored forever!

I doubt they will be stored forever. They will be lucky to make it through a great recession. A forgotten scratch in a forgotten passage can last as long as the building. But digital media requires someone to constantly maintain it. If we all move from Instagram and Facebook goes broke, you can bet those selfies will go the same way as geocities.

Except that the cost of storing this data is constantly going down. I wouldn't be surprised if you could store all of the internet as of 2000 in a handful of modern 16TB drives.

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