Library of Congress to house your tweets

[RazorBullet]

Put down that copy of Tiger Beat, Justin Bieber fans, for the teenage songster's Twitter musings soon will be a matter of public record. The Library of Congress announced today--via Twitter, no less--that is acquiring the Twitter's entire archive through donation. Now I feel a lot of pressure to make my tweets as witty as possible.

Exact details are to come, but the archive will include all public tweets since March, 2006. And with 55 million tweets per day from 105 million registered users, that's a lot of social blabbering to preserve. Just think, once Library visitors tire of perusing the latest copy of the Congressional Record, they can research Courtney Love's looniest updates or remind themselves of the drunken tweets they sent last weekend.

Though the whole idea may sound bizarre, the Library already holds more than 167 terabytes of Web-based information, including legal blogs and Web sites for political candidates and current lawmakers. As Matt Raymond put it in the Library's official blog, the institution is emphasizing the scholarly and research implications of Twitter. "It boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data," he wrote. "And I'm certain we'll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive."

That's a bit over the top, but there's no doubting that Twitter has assumed a prominent role during natural disasters and political crises like the unrest following the 2009 Iranian election. Indeed, in its blog, Twitter said it decided to donate the archive after the Library determined that public tweets are "important and worthy of preservation."

Once the acquisition is finished, tweets will be available for internal Library use, non-commercial research, and public display by the Library. So, go ahead, continue tweeting about the health care bill or what you had for breakfast this morning, but take some care since your thoughts will be saved for posterity. Your grandchildren may thank you or they may just be embarrassed.

link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20002517-1.html

even twitter is getting inscribed in history, weird and amusing at both.

[Timbuk2]

*shrugs*

Why not I suppose. It is the fashion of the day.

[Dreadnaught]

Does anyone have a weird feeling about a government agency -- no doubt working with Twitter -- storing all of this for real-time use? It'll be great subpoena bait, especially for those who one day decide to delete their Twitter feeds. Unlike a Web index of this stuff maintained by a private company, the LoC probably isn't going to resist any inquiry.

I realize this is a bit of an overblown idea, but given that this is all newfangled stuff for archivists, it's worth thinking about.

[CitizenCain]

What a fucking waste of money.

Archiving useless blabber by a bunch of nobodies. Ugh.

[Dreadnaught]

Yes, but it also allows someone to establish an alibi. Apparently no one seems to worry about this like I do...?

[CitizenCain]

Yes, but it also allows someone to establish an alibi. Apparently no one seems to worry about this like I do...?

I wouldn't worry about it. Can't you tweet from a smartphone anyway? Or set up a script to do a bunch of stuff online while you're out murdering that annoying pissant down the street? (Just cause he's 10 he thinks I won't do anything to him... dumbass.)

It really doesn't matter... the law's hopelessly out of date when it comes to technology, and always will be. It just doesn't move fast enough to keep pace with Moore's Law... but not to worry, it'll probably catch up to where we are now by the time the Matrix becomes a reality.

Truth be told, I'm pretty sure that people who get involved in the legal system don't have the mental capacity to deal with anything that moves as fast as the tech industry does. Morons who think everything can be codified in a book for all time to handle all situations. Pfft. Well, it probably worked alright when windmills were state of the art, but the fact that it hasn't been able to adapt to new technologies now that they come out on a regular basis kind of highlights its fatal flaw.

[LittleFuzzy]

Yes, but it also allows someone to establish an alibi. Apparently no one seems to worry about this like I do...?

I don't overly worry about it, no. There is no expectation of privacy for "tweets." The two are actually fairly antithetical, "tweeting" is built to share things with an interested public. I'm somewhat appalled, since I don't think much of Twitter, but I don't find it worrisome.

[Dreadnaught]

There's no expectation of privacy at all, however it sounds like this is being done in cooperation with Twitter. Which means that Twitter could conceivably be helping find Tweets as part of an investigation. Yeah, it's conspiratorial.

BTW this lame archive is primarily the result of reporters assuming that Twitter is some kind of broad-based phenomena, and not confined to a fairly narrow group of people.

[CitizenCain]

BTW this lame archive is primarily the result of reporters assuming that Twitter is some kind of broad-based phenomena, and not confined to a fairly narrow group of people.

Yeah, it's like the Second Life thing all over again. Fucking idiots and the idiots who listen to them....