The Pararchive Project

In July 2015, Mary Ellen McIntire reported on a fascinating project in the U.S called DataBridge that created a repository of scientific knowledge and data sets that would otherwise be dumped in hidden places thereby rendering them inaccessible. DataBridge helps deposit such data sets in one place to enable their exploitation for any potential value…

“The Internet Archive turns 20 years old next year, having archived nearly two decades and 23 petabytes of the evolution of the World Wide Web. Yet, surprisingly little is known about what exactly is in the Archive’s vaunted Wayback Machine. Beyond saying it has archived more than 445 billion webpages, the Archive has never published…

“…data can be and should be terrain for exploration, forum for interrogation, and substrate for creation. There is prose and poetry and performance to be made from these rows and columns.” More at… medium.com/digital-moma/thousands-of-exhausted-things-or-why-we-dedicated-moma-s-collection-data-to-the-public-domain-7e0a7165e99

Defunct software artefacts ignored by their creators – with availability, support and copyright often left ignored – has given rise to a culture of Abandonware. Amateur enthusiasts, unofficially and usually with fuzzy legal positions, make older software available through emulation or download. Just a few days ago, the Internet Archive launched a public collection of almost 2400 MS-DOS…

“The public will now be able to search the database of wills from their home, rather than needing to visit the probate registry to search the archives in person. … Every will among the 41 million is a precious historical document that can provide remarkable insight into generations of lives lived and lost.” More at… New…

Cultural institutions such as museums, and even galleries, will have the opportunity to become platforms, co-existing in both the digital and physical realms. WIRED’s recent The Getty and Google Unleash Free Art — And Your Creative Potential touches on some issues we’re beginning to explore receso with Pararchive, notably the benefits of a culture of openness around art collections…