En Masse Archival

April 17th, 2024 at 9:32PM

For the past few months or so, I've been thinking about mass-archival of data quite a bit more than usual. As of recently, I've actually started managing my archives more and more because of it. For one, I'm starting to figure out exactly where a book vs website-page would be better for archival of information. Mainly because of my recent experience thinking about the containment of such information. After much determination, I've decided on a conclusion, not exactly a shocking one but eh whatever.

For mass amounts of text and images only, I believe a book would be far better for what would be necessary over a website page. Sure, a website-page is far more sharable than a physical book, however, the book has many advantages for mass-archival. Text can be made small enough to require a magnifying glass, and maybe even images. Also, you could just make another book if necessary, such as how some encyclopedias do this. On top of that, a hard-cover book would likely survive EMPs and because books have no tracking, you do not need to take extra measures to avoid being hated on by the government if they try to do something to such a book (so long as you have a place to hide it).

However, website-pages have some advantage as well. For one, it can have audio AND video as well. Also, proper CSS usage allows you to redesign the entire page to your will, which makes things easier. Compared to sharing a PDF file, it is FAR more efficient and since PDFs can't be flipped through like an actual book anyways, it is basically superior to use HTML pages due to design, speed, and functionality.

However, I would still absolutely advocate for you to use a physical book for *MASS* archival of a subject and then just print it at home. Get a printing-press if you can and make them is basically what I am suggesting, and this would be very based to do if you have the resources to do so, because of the fact that you could use it to allow yourself to reprint old/censored books.

Of course, not the kind that are just on those "top 10 banned books" list and it's just like '1. 1984, *3rd world country* banned it for 5 minutes before we assasssinated their government for doing so then it was unbanned.' No, we're talking about anti-government books that aren't allowed to be published or something you'd probably find only through obscure Russian forums or something similar. Remember, if an anti-government book that is for your country is just on Amazon, and they haven't already said it was right 20 years later, it is likely incorrect. Well, probably, I doubt they'd just let a book stay up that exposes FBI secrets yknow? Maybe they would idk, perhaps the FBI would be incompetent enough to do that, but I doubt they are.

Now in terms of video/audio archival though, how can we even do that? Well, video is technically just a ton of images strung together moving so fast that it moves, so I'd imagine just a ton of VHS tapes would be plenty along with a VHS player. As for audio, I know sounds are waves tho I'm still rather unsure how a cassette tape works on that front. However, I do have 5 cassette tapes AND a cassette player/recorder that I got out of the dumpster. There is no case on the batteries though, so it's actually really annoying to use for a prolonged period of time until I can get a replacement back for the battery-area. Otherwise, works well seemingly, even if I need to get a mic for it soon.

I'm not sure how VHS/cassette tapes would fare against EMPs, but I'd trust VHS/cassette more than digital video/audio such as CD, in terms of lasting overall anyways rather than just EMPs. I know that the oldest voice ever recorded was able to be recovered (despite it not being intended for playback) which was made in 1860, I actually made a video on the subject which I had somewhere. However, it only was recovered because we could playback audio recorded as a piece of paper. Also, it took tons of adjusting of speed and it was only intended to study sound-waves, not play audio.

Still cool how far this stuff goes back though, and if done right I'd imagine you could easily record a ton of audio on a thin-sheet of paper. However, I'd just stick to the regular cassette-tapes.

Back to the audio-cassettes though, I have the ability to record/play them back. I have 90 minute tapes I believe, 45-min per side. Since I have 5 of them, I have a little over 7 hours of audio I can play back. I like the fact that tapes are really small too, they could easily still be used for more professional recordings or archives that are meant to last. I'd still keep a digital version, but having both digital and analog is pretty nice for me. I'll probably get more cassettes soon, preferably really long ones. So 120 minutes per tape, 60min per side. That seems like the most reasonable bet, and then I could obtain them en masse.

I will probably do the same thing with VHS, but I don't really have a way to do so as of now because of the fact that I don't have a VHS-video recorder. But that can't be *too* hard to get, and if it is then whatever.

One day, I could absolutely see myself absolutely trying to compile all of my blogposts and other stuff into a single REALLY LONG book (long after I quit making posts under "Digital Cheese", if I ever do quit). For obvious reasons, this book would be at least 1k pages long as I have to compress over 750 posts from SDK alone into this book, let alone the other posts such as ones I've made here, which itself accounts for even more posting to have to figure out. If I had to take a guess, compiling everything I've written into a singular book to be published would require over 1k pages. Mass-archival taken to an extreme, btw this isn't even considering my 500+ videos, which can't be placed onto books.

You don't realize how much you either dedicated or wasted your life doing something until you start doing the math. 5 years, over 500+ videos AND probably over 1k writings, not even considering other things like art/music (music of which I've lost, which sucks even tho it was terriblly made). I wonder how I haven't went entirely insane at this rate XD, keep in mind that most of it has only been made 2022-2024, not 2019-2021.

I'll have to think on a mass-archival plan for everything. There are literally several thousand archives I have sitting around, so it's not as if I can just upload it to my website without careful consideration. Even if that weren't the case, keep in mind that much of it has broken copyright law in the past, unless Fair Use can cover me (in basically every case, it would in theory, but in practice it's possible to get sued even if I'd win still, mainly because I don't have the ability to just threaten a giant like Nintendo if they drag me to court). End of status-post though, thanks for reading :D