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 the support of FFDW, LIL plans to explore decentralized technologies capable of preserving digital information.
Democratize open knowledge
While there is a lot of information to consume in 2022, it is difficult to verify what is legitimate and there is considerable distrust of mainstream media sources. In the United States, for example, America’s confidence and confidence level in the media fell to all-time lows in a recent Gallup poll released this month. Of the American adults surveyed, only 16% said they had “a lot” of faith in today’s news publications, and only 11% trusted the news on television. Furthermore, in recent years, there has also been a lot of misinformation and debates about technical definitions.
For example, last week, the term “recession” became a controversial topic on the definition when the White House released two blog posts showing the government’s description of the word’s meaning. Then on July 27, over a 24-hour period, Wikipedia’s definition of the word recession was revised dozens of times. Wikipedia revisions continue to this day and the Wiki page notes that “the media have released an outdated version of this article”. By simply leveraging the data saved on archive.org, for virtually any month of the year other than 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 was partnering with Harvard University’s Library Innovation Lab (LIL) to preserve digital information through 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). Wednesday’s announcement provides further details that FFDW will help LIL promote the idea of increasing access to information through decentralized technologies.
“FFDW is on a mission to preserve humanity’s most important information,” FFDW President and President Marta Belcher explained in a statement. “This collaboration will allow the Library Innovation Lab to explore how decentralized technologies can solve real-world challenges to preserve critical data and we are excited to support the Library’s Democratizing Open Knowledge program,” added Belcher.
FFDW says Harvard’s LIL already has a solid track record of “securing and increasing access” to information
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 the IPFS distributed network. Filecoin’s native cryptocurrency filecoin (FIL) has increased by 47.3% against the US dollar in the past 24 hours, and FIL has increased by 67.1% in the past 14 days. In late May, Protocol Labs explained that it was working with defense contractor and Maryland-based aerospace firm Lockheed Martin to bring decentralized storage concepts to space.
According to FFDW’s announcement on Wednesday, LIL and FFDW have plans to fight linkrot, explore the creation of strong dark archives, and protect valuable research data. LIL has already created tools and websites such as perma.cc, opencasebook.org and LIL Caselaw Access Project. Through collaborative efforts, 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 that 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.
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