Jill Lepore’s piece, The Cobweb, is extremely interesting because it contradicts many of my assumptions about the internet. In the Age of the Internet we’re reminded over and over again to be extremely cautious of what we post online, because anything what goes into the ether is there for good. Lepore points out how in many cases this widespread assumption is simply false. Fascinatingly, the average life of a web page is only about 100 days. This short existence is not constrained to memes, short blog posts, or social media posts, but scientific paper and online evidence presented in court cases also disappears quickly.

This issue must be given thought, because references are a key component of knowledge, and if a referenced work can disappear with such ease, we’re in danger of substantial components and links of our knowledge base. I knew MLA and AMA citation formats discourage the use of web urls in citing online resources, but didn’t full understand the rational behind this convention until reading The Cobweb.

I’m extremely curious how efforts like the Wayback Machine are viewed in the context of the right to be forgetten debate. There is a difficult dichotomy to these two sides. On one hand, there are clear benefits to archives and the preservation of knowledge. It’s challenging to be realiant on information that is changing beneath your feet, and the burning at the library at Alexandria is a tragedy still remembered. On the other hand, there are privacy issues associated with this type of mass collection and retention of information. Under what circumstances is the Wayback Machine required to remove records? As an example, what if a nude photo of an underage girl gets posted on a web page on the internet, presumbly the Wayback Machine would be required to remove this page from its archive? But who makes and executes these decisions?

Hopefully technology like the Wayback Machine will become less necessary for things like personal data preservation in the case of a hosting website shutting down. It seems the world should be moving towards a model where people have more control of their personal data, but it’s unclear to me how a technology like the Wayback Machine fits into this world.