The New Persistence: Google, Trackback, and Comments

Over this past week I've discussed a number of different issues relating to the nature of the web and our role in both building and preserving its architecture. Without exception, the web is changing our lives in a way that we are still mostly incapable of describing, despite our efforts to categorize and organize information.

One of the key concepts that has been unearthed in the last few days is the notion of permanence and the long term persistence of Internet content and our connected society. As I have been watching this little log grow over the past 3 weeks, I've checked the progress in the web logs from day to day to see how people are finding me and where they are coming from. The things you find out are pretty amazing.

What I have come to find out is that there are several new forms of persistence that have come into existence, of course we tend to overlook them. So here's what I've seen so far:

Google Persistence

Although this site is very new, that hasn't prevented Google from indexing it in one way or another, be it by domain, by name, or in reference to some term a user has searched for (apparently kazaa's law is on a lot of people's minds). Google has become one of the new historians for the online society. It is often thought that information can escape if it is erased from your site quickly enough. Ironically, today's world of syndication -- a stream flowing into a river -- brings content and information to the world at lightning speed. And once this happens, odds are Google's grabbed it, indexed it, and archived it away.

Trackback Persistence

Movable Type users are very familiar with this concept of persistence. Although Trackback, the idea that one author automagically rings another author's entry's doorbell, is intended to pass along a "FYI" message to the original author, the reality is that an excerpt of someone elses's stream of consciousness is xeroxed and filed away tightly at someone elses repository for you. If you're lucky, you've Trackbacked to someone left on the power scale and you also get the secondary, yet powerful Googsistence working for you.

Comment Persistence

For many, it's easier to comment on other's thoughts than to initiate your own topics. I was in this position for the past year, blogging vicariously through friends, buddies, and even the occassional Anti-Buddy. The interesting thing is that even though the commentary is lower down in the overall hierarchy, it's extremely valuable and probably equally important to the entire blogosphere. To understand how Comment Persistence kicks in, well it's the same as Trackback Persistence really. Once your comments are down on paper, they'e out there for good -- except if you write something completely inappropriate and the owner removes them (but we know better than to assume that it's not been grabbed, indexed, or archived by Google yet.

The record of our thoughts, actions, and reactions to our interaction are now quickly becoming a huge, dynamic part of our collective history. Today is my birthday and I'm heading off to celebrate for the next few days, safe with the knowledge that my image is being etched on mirrorred platters around the world.