Nothing Is Permanent in the Digital World
数字世界里没有永恒
Jenni Russell 珍妮·拉塞尔
Last month my 84-year-old mother's phone， an elderly Samsung， was stolen. The most upsetting loss was four years of photographs that had never been uploaded anywhere else. They weren't just an archive， they were a pleasure; she often scrolled through them when she was by herself. Now they have vanished. None of her children or grandchildren had thought to ask whether she was saving them. The advent of automatic cloud services had passed my mother by.
So， you may think to yourself， that's just an out-of-touch old lady and her careless children. Your data is safe and solid in an online world that never forgets. Actually it's not as simple as that. Many of us have accidentally lost data that meant a great deal to us， either for ever or because we didn't know how to retrieve it.
A father tells me that the three years of texts between him and his daughter as she started secondary school were a marvellous record of her life and their relationship in the early teenage years. They were sometimes mundane， sometimes electrifyingly intense and emotional， as at the moment she was fleeing and hiding from an apparent terrorist attack in Oxford Street; sometimes capturing parental concern， as when he urged her not to hang out with a particular group of people because they always made her miserable in the end.
Two years ago， mysteriously， and to his great sadness， he somehow deleted the entire conversation. Talking to me now he wonders whether there's any way of getting them back. If the police can always track deleted messages from paedophiles， perhaps his phone company or a tech expert can do the same.
The point is that while recovery might be feasible， many of us don't know how to do it， or — more importantly — how to store those messages in the long term. Even when the cloud keeps track of them they only transfer from one phone to the next. Spooling through a five or ten-year exchange on a mobile is no way to find or hang on to the meaningful ones.
The ubiquitousness of the internet gives its contents the illusion of permanence. A twentysomething woman didn't bother to document much of her time at university because all her group posted photographs to Facebook. Recently she looked those up， only to find several old acquaintances had deactivated their accounts. Hundreds of pictures she'd assumed were dependable history had evaporated.
Work can vanish too. Websites aren't solid constructions; they exist only as long as someone maintains and pays for them. They can dematerialise overnight， either deliberately or accidentally. A man who spent years carefully constructing an archive of family history missed the reminder that his annual hosting fee was due， and lost everything.
Most of us assume that as long as we download to our own computers and upload backups to the web， our data is safe. Not so. Vinton Cerf， one of the founders of the internet and now a vice-president at Google， has been warning for years that we're in danger of entering a digital dark age， where everything stored on computers will eventually be lost.
The problem is that when we store memories and information digitally， to remain accessible it must be readable by both the machines and software we have at the time. Yet these change so rapidly that old storage keeps becoming obsolete. Either we must endlessly copy information to the newest formats， or as Cerf suggests， someone must commit to making a record of how every machine and system works， to provide a digital key in the future. In the digital revolution nothing is for ever， he points out.
The only guaranteed way to keep what matters to us is to make it physical. Save， copy， print and store. In the digital era， it turns out， the paper image is king.
上个月，我84岁母亲的旧三星手机被窃。最让人难过的损失是四年来从没上传到其他任何地方的照片。它们不仅是档案，也是乐趣；她独自一人的时候经常翻看。如今，它们消失了。她的儿女和孙辈都没想到过询问她是否保存了这些照片。自动云服务的出现绕开了我母亲。
所以，你可能会对自己说，那只不过是个落伍的老太太和她粗心的儿女干出的事。在永不遗忘的网络世界里，你的数据安然无恙。其实没那么简单。我们中的许多人意外丢失过对我们来说意义重大的数据，要么再也找不回来，要么因为我们不知道如何找回来。
一位父亲告诉我，他从女儿上中学起与她互发的三年短信是她十岁出头那几年的生活以及父女关系的精彩记录。短信有时很平淡，有时极其热切和深情，比如她逃避牛津街上的一次显而易见的恐怖袭击时；有时体现了家长的关心，比如当他要求她不要与某一伙人混在一起，因为他们最后总是搞得她很不开心。
两年前，他不知怎么删除了所有对话，很匪夷所思，而且令他非常伤心。他现在跟我说起来，想知道是否有办法把对话找回来。如果警方总能追查到恋童癖发出的被删除的信息，或许他的电话公司或者技术专家也能做得到。
关键是，找回来或许做得到，但我们中的许多人不知道怎样做，更重要的是，不知道怎样长期存储这些信息。即使云服务保存了记录，它们也只不过是从一部手机转移到下一部。在手机上浏览五年或10年的对话并不能找到或者抓住有意义的那几条。
互联网的无处不在使得其内容具有了持久存在的假象。一个20多岁的女子没有费心去记录她在大学的许多时光，因为她圈子里的所有人都在脸书网站上贴照片。最近她查找照片，却发现好几个老熟人已经停用账户。她以为是可靠记录的数百张照片已经不复存在。
工作成果也会消失。网站不是固定结构；它们只在有人维护并支付费用的情况下存在。要么有意，要么无意，它们可能会在一夜之间消失。一个花费多年时间精心编纂家族历史档案的男子错过了缴纳年度租用费的通知，结果失去了一切。
我们中的大多数人以为，只要我们下载到自己的电脑上，并且将备份上传到网上，我们的数据就安全了。并非如此。互联网创始人之一、现任谷歌公司副总裁的文顿·瑟夫多年来一直警告说，我们面临着进入数字黑暗时代的危险，在那个时代，存储在电脑上的所有东西终将丢失。
问题是，当我们以数字方式存储记忆和信息时，要想保持可以访问，它必须是当下的机器和软件都可读取的。然而，这些变化得太快，以至旧的存储方式不断过时。要么我们必须无休止地将信息复制成最新格式，要么像瑟夫建议的那样，必须有人致力于记录所有机器和系统的工作方式，以便将来提供数字密钥。他指出，数字革命中没有永恒。
要想保住我们看重的东西，唯一保险的方式是使之成为有形的存在。保存、复制、打印和存储。事实证明，在数字时代，纸质图像才是王者。（葛雪蕾译自英国《泰晤士报》网站7月18日文章）