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The Web Is Thirteen And It Has A Memory ProblemJANUARY 20, 2004 · 14:25
For thirteen years people have been told that the web does not forget, which has turned out to be approximately correct: it remembers everything except who asked, why they asked, and whether they wanted it.
A SERVER ROOM. NONE OF THESE ROOMS CONTAIN A MEMORY.
( FILE PHOTO )
A SERVER ROOM. NONE OF THESE ROOMS CONTAIN A MEMORY.
LONDON, January 20 -- Thirteen years after the first web page, a study published this week found that the average page published in 1996 can still be reached at its original address in one case in three.
Of the pages that have survived, a substantial proportion now contain material whose author is unknown, whose date is unknown, and whose purpose has been forgotten by everyone including the people who made it.
Corrections: none so far. Published items are never corrected, they are replaced,
and the replacement keeps the original in the archive, where nobody will look for it.
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