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On July 27, the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) announced that it will support an initiative with Harvard University’s Library Innovation Lab (LIL) called the “Democratizing Open Knowledge” program. With support from FFDW, LIL plans to explore decentralized technologies that can preserve digital information.
While there is a lot of information to consume in 2022, it is difficult to verify what is legitimate, and there is a significant amount of mistrust of mainstream media sources. In the United States, for example, America’s trust and confidence in the media fell to record lows in a recent Gallup poll published this month. Of the American adults polled, only 16% said they had “quite a lot” of trust in today’s news publications, and only 11% trusted news on television. Also, over the last few years, there has also been a lot of disinformation and debates about technical definitions.
For example, this past week, the term “recession” became a controversial topic over its definition when the White House published two blog posts showing the government’s description of the word’s meaning. Then on July 27, in a 24-hour period, the definition of the word recession on Wikipedia was revised dozens of times. Wikipedia revisions continue to this day, and the Wiki page notes that “media have circulated an out-of-date version of this article.” By simply tapping into the data stored at archive.org, for virtually any month of the year except July, the archived data shows that the definition of the word recession has changed a lot since then.
On Wednesday, the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) revealed that it is partnering with Harvard University’s Library Innovation Lab (LIL) to preserve digital information via decentralized technologies. Harvard’s LIL and FFDW will contribute to the “Democratizing Open Knowledge” program, which aims to help libraries “share knowledge through technology.” Technologies include specific tools such as the Filecoin network and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). The announcement Wednesday further details that FFDW will help LIL forward the idea of increasing access to information through decentralized technologies.
“FFDW is on a mission to preserve humanity’s most important information,” explained FFDW President and Chair Marta Belcher in a statement. “This collaboration will enable the Library Innovation Lab to explore how decentralized technologies can solve real-world challenges for preserving critical data, and we are excited to support the Library’s Democratizing Open Knowledge program,” Belcher added.
IPFS is essentially a peer-to-peer (P2P) system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications and data in a distributed file system. Filecoin is an open source blockchain created by Protocol Labs and is built on top of the distributed IPFS network. Filecoin’s native crypto asset filecoin (FIL) has traded up 47.3% against the US dollar in the last 24 hours and FIL is up 67.1% in the last 14 days. In late May, Protocol Labs detailed that it is working with Maryland-based defense and aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin to bring decentralized storage concepts to space.
According to FFDW’s announcement last Wednesday, LIL and FFDW plan to fight link rot, explore the creation of strong dark archives and protect valuable research data. LIL has already built tools and websites such as perma.cc, opencasebook.org and the LIL Caselaw Access Project. Through collaboration, LIL and FFDW want to address how technology can help establish “reliable sources” and “long-term preservation of digital information.”
What do you think of the initiative FFDW and LIL are working on to preserve digital information? Do you think technology can help to decentralize access to today’s information and make it more reliable? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
Image credit: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons
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