Ecology of Longevity

the relevance of evolutionary theory for digital preservation

Peter . Doorn @ dans.knaw.nlDirk . Roorda @ dans.knaw.nl

http://www.dans.knaw.nl/en

Sustainabilityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf

the capacity to endure. In ecology the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time

caveats

✔ parallel patterns✖ prediction

✔ exploration✖ scientifically tested✔ partially testable

Darwin

populations of organisms

in an environment

living and reproducing

imperfect inheritance of traits

environment cannot sustain offspring

individuals have different survival chances

natural selection of “the fittest”

✖Mendel ✖genetics ✖DNA

Lamarck

inheritance

of acquired properties

much speedier evolution

valid for cultural inheritance/heredity

Modern synthesis

heredity works through genes,

collectively: DNA

DNA is copied, recombined

damaged, repaired, mutated

At the core of life is information processing.

ParadoxesLessons

(i) individuals don’t survive, the system does

(ii) survival is an unintentional result

(iii) there is no long-term, only short-term

... with extensions ...

complexity sciencesociology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_(sociology)

patterns and processes of

individuals versus communities

economy

psychology

mechanics

... biology!

M. Mitchell Waldrop

Critical Events in Evolving Networks - http://www.creen.org/

Back from the Brink - http://ideas.repec.org/p/dgr/umamer/2000005.html

evolution in ictcomputing capacity

mainframe batch

personal computer

cloud

softwaredos-windows-androidbasic – pascal – javawordperfect – ODF - TEI

networkingdevice

organisationworld-wide

hardware tube

transistor chipmedia

numberstext

imageaudiovideo

simulation

strategies to preserve

• emulation• preserve the environment of the data

• migration• adapt the data to the environment

Parallel 1: use and retain

current digital preservation thought

first preserve, then re-use

perverse consequence:

preserving too well prevents re-use!

evolution gets rid of unused functions

color view - eyes - odor receptors

evolutionary preservation thought

first re-use, then preserve

Parallel 2: copies and evolvability

copies are free to evolve

originals are fixed

evolution is not interested in originals

make copies in evolvable formats

migration preferable over emulation

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000112

Parallel 3: Sexual Selectionindicators

of

survival

success

hard-to-fakeconsiderable investment

promote mating

Paradigms: bio - techpart constructionmachine

assembly lineidentical copies

refactoring market

Paradigms: analog - digital

Toy ecosystem

clouds= { workspaces }

works= { copies }

users= owners of workspaces

http://www.duraspace.org/duracloud.php

Infrastructure rules• I access therefore I copy

• accessing a work is copying it to your own workspace

• the cloud may de-duplicate identical copies in different workspaces• for storage optimisation

• the cloud may re-duplicate copies• for access optimisation

• the cloud extracts metadata from works and has mechanisms to search

Usability rules

• the cloud provides a linking system between works• not between copies• intelligent persistent identifiers

• the cloud maintains a system of access rights• which is respected by the linking behaviour

Economic rules

• users pay for their workspace• for storage capacity multiplied by time:• GByte * month

• users pay for making a copy of a work• this fee will come to the good of current

owners of a copy of the same work• divided in equal parts• this fee is not for intellectual property, but is

purely infrastructural

Preservation rules

• a preservation institution is just a workspace user

• all users may request from the cloud• the number of extant copies of works

• a preservation institution specialises in:• rare works!

Incentives for preservation

• adding value to a work implies• more access => more income

• keeping only rare works implies• every access is lucrative

• a surviving preservation institution keeps• looking for value enhancement• improving usability of its resources• throwing away abundant resources

Ecology of sustainable information

• financial incentive to preserve• optimisations in value / cost• data use is instrumental in preservation• {actors} ≈ {stakeholders}

it is already faintly realistic

Simulation

• play with the monetary parameters• study models with interesting behaviour• maybe there are emergent patterns• hopefully meaningful in the real world

Evolution and Digital Preservation

a preservation institution

helps rare works to survive

and thus sustains its own survival

the Future is in the Clouds

Thank You