We may be drowning, actually. Now copies are so common as to be considered worthless, and very little attention is giving to preserving them over the long term. It s scary. And yet . . . Anyone wandering through the Internet might begin to feel that memory loss isn t the problem.
Archivists are everywhere, in fact official and self-made.
Likewise, any silly message that you broadcast to any Usenet newsgroup is now being stored, for eternity or some approximation thereof, by a variety of commercial services. M ost people, unfortunately, don t have posterity in mind when they fire off their little notes. Internet communication seems so spontaneous and personal. Sometimes, as the years go by, privacy demands a gentle forgetfulness. But it lives on, as corporate lawyers and prosecutors have realized.