Nothing is "meant to be thrown away."

[internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org]

Nothing is "meant to be thrown away." Not the MTV News archive. Not Gawker. Not the penny press of the 1800s. ️

Maria Bustillos argues that keeping the receipts is about more than nostalgia. It's about the raw material of history.

Read Maria’s essay & more in VANISHING CULTURE from the #InternetArchive

Download & read, FREE: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/77
Purchase in print: https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/vanishing-culture-a-report-on-our-fragile-cultural-record-9798995425014/new

@maria #VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #OpenAccess #Preservation

[essanay@sfba.social]

@internetarchive @maria When I see trashy magazines about movie stars in the checkout line, I roll my eyes.
But gossipy fan magazines from the silent era are *gold* (even though, in their time, they were just as frivolous and dumb as today's are now).
And they're there for browsing on the Internet Archive. We appreciate it.

[perhaps391@mastodon.social]

@internetarchive @maria We should keep the receipts because otherwise, future historians won't believe that our society could have been so repeatedly gullible, short-sighted and obtuse.

The sheer scale of the oceans of text, sound and video we swim in today will not be adequately understood if only a few terabytes survive.

The enormous amounts of disinformation and propaganda we navigate now won't be understood in the future without samples from many sources.

Save as much as you can.

[haui@mastodon.giftedmc.com]

@internetarchive
The most important skill a human posesses is to ask why. The answer to this question is "imperialism". Imperialism deletes history, culture and roots. Why? Because its the only way to make people into slaves and break their spirit. Because people with spirit, with a past, will always revolt against the cruel and stupid decisions of evil. This has been proven time and time again.
@maria