On July 27, the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) announced that it is supporting an initiative called “Democratizing Open Knowledge” with Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab (LIL) With FFDW’s support, LIL will explore decentralized technologies that can store digital information.
Democratizing Open Knowledge
While there is a lot of information to consume in 2022, it is difficult to ascertain what is legitimate information, and there is considerable distrust of mainstream media sources. In the U.S., for example, a recent Gallup poll released this month shows that American trust and confidencein the media has sunk to an all-time low. Only 16% of American adults surveyed said they have “a great deal” of trust in today’s news publications, and only 11% trust television news. In addition, the past few years have also seen a growing debate over disinformation and professional definitions.
For example, the term “recession” became controversial over its definition this past week when the White House published two blog posts offering the government’s explanation of what the term means. Then, on July 27, over the course of 24 hours, Wikipedia’s definition of the word recession was revised dozens of times. Wikipedia’s revisioncontinues today, with the wiki page stating that “media outlets have circulated an outdated version of this article.” By simply utilizing thedata 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 significantly since then.
On Wednesday,the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) revealed that it is working with theLibrary Innovation Labat Harvard University. (FFDW) has revealed that it is collaborating with the Library Innovation Lab(LIL) to preserve digital information through distributed technology. Harvard’s LIL and FFDW are contributing to the “Democratizing Open Knowledge” program, which aims to help libraries “share knowledge through technology.” Technology includes specific tools likethe Filecoin networkand the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). Wednesday’s announcement further explains how FFDW will help LIL promote the idea of increasing access to information through distributed technology.
“FFDW is on a mission to preserve humanity’s most important information,” explained Marta Belcher, president and chair of FFDW, in a statement. Belcher added, “Through this collaboration, the Library Innovation Lab is thrilled to support the Library’s Open Knowledge Democratization program by exploring how distributed technology can solve real-world challenges to preserving critical data.”
FFDW says Harvard’s LIL already has a strong background in “protecting and improving access” to information
IPFSis 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 block chain and is built on top of an IPFS distributed network.Filecoin’s native crypto assetFilecoin (FIL)has risen 47.3% against the US dollar in the past 24 hours, and FIL has risen 67.1% in the past 14 days.At the end of May Protocol Labsdetailedworking with Lockheed Martin, a Maryland-based defense contractor and aerospace business, to bring the concept of distributed storage into space.
According to FFDW’s announcement last Wednesday, LIL and FFDW plan to fight the linkrot and seek to create a powerful dark archive to protect valuable research data LIL has already built tools and websites likeperma.cc57} opencasebook.organd has already built tools and websites likeperma.ccand building tools such as LIL’sCaseelaw Access ProjectThrough their joint work, LIL and FFDW hope to address how technology can help establish “trusted sources” and “long-term preservation of digital information.”
What do you think of the initiatives FFDW and LIL are working on to preserve digital information? Do you think technology can help decentralize access to information today and make it more reliable? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons