The Web has Alzheimer's

[Talk@codebits 2011. movie available at: https://codebits.eu/intra/s/session/205]

The Web is aging and losing memory of its past.

We increasingly depend on the Web information lookup and storage and while we are eager for innovation and to follow trends, we are forgetting our current history and knowledge due to the transient nature of the Web.

George Santayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Transcript

1. The Web has … Alzheimer's @davidjvcruz Codebits2011
2. DISCLAIMER (http://archive.pt) → @davidjvcruz
3. Alzheimer's... Seriously ?
4. The Web is forgetting you should care
5. 404 Slide Not Found –
6. 500 Internal Slide Error –
8. “But it was there just now” http://www.mementoweb.org/demo/picoftheday.mov
9. Major social and historical changes are happening on the Web
11. A lot of our lives and culture is Web-only Blogs photos shops eGov
12. A 2004 study showed that after 1 year, Only 40% of the pages still existed (A Ntoulas, J Cho, C Olston, 2004)
13. We risk to lose all of that. The information, the details, the context.
14. Text Images Videos Aestetics Emotions Information is
15. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, 1984
16. What can you gain from Web's memory
17. Learn
18. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana
19. Pages would never disapear Check: “Ressurect pages” addon for Firefox
20. broken Never again see a broken bookmark Tip: Pinboard.in does just that
21. HUGE resource for data-mining
22. observe existing trends
23. Revisit old memories
24. 19 December 2007 http://arquivo.pt/wayback/wayback/id39803index0
25. 22 Outubro 2008 http://arquivo.pt/wayback/wayback/id13099index7
26. Who is preserving Web's memory?
27. Web caches? Too transient / short effect
28. Browser's “save webpage as...” Not practical. Isn't preemptive
29. Current best answer: Web Archives
30. search engines Web archives
31. Internet Archive has over 150 billion of archived content Over 5'500 TB starting from 1996 http://archive.org
32. 44 Web archiving initiatives http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Web_archiving_initiatives
34. Library of Congress is archiving all our tweets
35. Memento Improving HTTP so it has memories http://www.mementoweb.org/
36. Sadly, Legislation (for the preservation) of the Web is poor or non-existant
37. To be part of Web's memory you must future proof your website
38. From server to content. There is a lot you can do.
39. Server
40. Correct HTTP response Status code, date, last-modified, content-encoding, MIME, ...
41. Robots.txt Images CSS Javascript Forbidden content HTML x
42. Sitemap.xml Valid Complete Updated
43. Design you URLs (yes, you have to)
44. Make them memorable. Don't change them every month Avoid embedding technology (.cgi, .php, .jsp)
45. HTML/CSS/JS
46. Valid html/css Semantically correct correct <!doctype>
47. Don't <a href=”javascript:linkTo()”> ever </a> <a href=”fallback.html” onclick=”f()”> like that </a>
48. Don't create URLs in JS code
49. Don't use JavaScript only client-side interfaces (AJAX, #! technique) Remember Gawker/Lifehacker #!fail?
50. → Use Progressive enhancement → Have a static/server-side page
51. Avoid shifting in-progress specifications (e.g., websockets)
52. File types
53. Don't use files without an open specification
54. Avoid anything that requires plugins: flash, silverlight, ...
55. Some formats to ❤ plain text OpenDocument XML PNG SVG PDF OGG Flac ...
56. Metadata
57. Mark the creation date, modification date, author, etc.
58. ... with Dublin Core metadata (can be in <head/> or in file “dublin.rdf”)
59. ... microformats
60. ...using html5 syntax Microdata (using schema.org specs) <time/> <data/>
61. Content
62. have I linked to the correct, permanent URLs?
63. factualy correct? well written? typos free? Is it
64. Improve SEO Improve preservation →
65. Improve accessibility improve preservation →
66. Some social networks are [silos] black holes
67. tl;dr Give me just one tip
68. your site should be accessible TIP:
69. however...
70. Your pages, posts, photos, videos, tweets, comments may live forever
71. Sometimes, the Web doesn't forget
72. Be careful of what you put online
73. Will you be ashamed/embarassed in 1 year 5 years? 10 years?
74. If it spreads it may be impossible to remove
75. And if you try ...
76. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect STREISAND EFFECT
77. Who knows who will see it
78. wrapping up & [ ]
79. The Web is forgetting our history.
80. Web's memory is a treasure waiting to be mined
81. Current Web Archives aren't enough
82. Improve your website so it is well preserved (at least, making it accessible)
83. Start now. Because, when you will need it, it will be already too late.
84. http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-.../TheProject.html 3 March 1992
85. Did I forget anything? Ask away @davidjvcruz