Time spent looking at a cellphone is time spent oblivious to the world.

Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians.

We faced a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century.” through “bit rot,” when old computer files become useless junk.

There is a sense of powerlessness and fatalism about TECHNOLOGY.

If consciousness or HISTORICAL intelligence are lost, it might mean that value itself becomes absent from the universe.

We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realising it.

Ancient civilizations suffered no such problems, because histories written in cuneiform on baked clay tablets, or rolled papyrus scrolls, needed only eyes to read them.

To day “intelligence” is related to statistical and economic notions of rationality – colloquially, the ability to make good decisions, plans, or inferences.  To study today’s culture, future scholars will be faced with PDFs, Word documents, and hundreds of other file types that can only be interpreted with dedicated software and sometimes hardware too.

 From This to This      

Most of the images we take today are uploaded straight from a digital camera or a phone, with the picture never actually existing as a physical artifact.

The significance of documents and correspondence is often not fully appreciated until hundreds of years later.

We’ve learned from objects that have been preserved purely by happenstance that give us insights into an earlier civilisation,”

We need history to embrace new values and institutions in pursuit of a just, fulfilling, and sustainable civilization not a “digital black hole”.

In fact, due to the intricate disconnectedness of production and economies around the world today, our technological civilization is perhaps more prone to a sudden collapse than other societies through history.

When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world-wide web the more important it is that we create legal permissions to copy and store software before it dies.

So digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future.

Deciding on the best format to preserve them for the next hundred years relies on anticipating what technology is likely to still be available in the future.

Computer hard disks can hold vast amounts of digitised information, but everything is lost if it fails or is wiped.

How do we preserve our interaction on Facebook, Twitter, comment threads and citizen journalism across the web?

In fact, due to the intricate disconnectedness of production and economies around the world today, our technological civilization is perhaps more prone to a sudden collapse than other societies through history. Plenty of once-great civilisations have collapsed, and our current industrialised society is by no means invulnerable –

Who will decide what worth keeping and where will we preserve a core kernel of human knowledge.

The significance of documents and correspondence is often not fully appreciated until hundreds of years later.

Even though Wikipedia represents a vast repository of information, it is not structured in a way that would guide a post-catastrophe society through stages of recovery.

Google certainly is not.

It has already changed the world by altering the way we interact with technology and there can be no questions its long-term ambitions.

Its mission is to collect information which you will have to buy with a google wallet.

“We envision a marketplace for payment instruments, commerce and loyalty services”

It’s not hard to envision a fully intact ecosystem of Google offerings with location-based mobile ads driving tracked incremental revenue via etail integrated mobile commerce, or via sales that are picked up in-store, via mobile payment.

“Now toss in Google Offers, NFC and QR codes for trigger point marketing, and the fact that Google already has the accounts open and the pot gets even richer.”

Personally I have little time for Banks but I would rather have a bank to provide a of mobile wallet products, not technology companies that can disappear into the cloud.

If Google was to make a move into supporting bank-branded wallets we would all become Googlefyed.

Google has far more on its plate than just financial services.

It’s a major player in telecommunications with its Android smart phone platform. It’s made forays into thermostats, home security and satellite imaging.

So it’s not just words and images that we risk losing for ever it’s the “grey literature” of official reports, briefings and policy statements that are only published online also risk being lost to the future?

Bit rot, a digital dark age is on the horizon unless we store information in DNA.

“It is very possible that … one machine would suffice to solve all the problems … of the whole [world]” – Sir Charles Darwin, 1946.

“Technology gives us the facilities that lessen the barriers of time and distance – the telegraph and cable, the telephone, radio, and the rest.” – Emily Greene Balch.

Perhaps The ETHEREUM IS THE ANSWER.

Importantly, because there is not a company or indeed any entity in charge of or controlling Ethereum, the cost of running the infrastructure doesn’t have to include any profit margin.

It might allow us to push the boundary on what the digital realm can cover.

But this is a what if for the history books.