FFDW Supports Harvard University’s LIL to Preserve Digital Information
The Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) announced it will be supporting an initiative with Harvard University’s Library Innovation Lab (LIL) called the "Democratizing Open Knowledge" program on July 27, 2022. With FFDW’s support, LIL plans to explore decentralized technologies that can preserve digital information.
Democratizing Open Knowledge
Information
consumption in 2022 has created new dimensions. While there is a lot of
information emerging, it’s hard to verify what is legitimate, and there is a
significant amount of distrust towards mainstream media sources. In the U.S.,
for example, America’s trust and confidence levels in the media have sunk
to record lows in a recent Gallup poll published this month. Among the
American adults surveyed, only 16% said they had "quite a lot" of
confidence in today’s news publications, and only 11% trusted news on
television. Moreover, during the last few years, there’s also been a lot of
disinformation and debates over technical definitions.
For example,
in the past week, the term "recession" became a controversial
subject over the definition when the White House published two blog posts
that highlighted the government’s description of the word’s meaning. Then on
July 27, in the last 24 hours, the definition of the word "recession"
on Wikipedia was revised dozens of times. Wikipedia revisions continue to
this day, and the Wiki page notes that "media outlets have circulated
an outdated version of this article."
The Filecoin
Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) has revealed that it is
working with Harvard University’s Library Innovation Lab (LIL) to
preserve digital information via 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 like the Filecoin network and the
Interplanetary File System (IPFS). The announcement further details that FFDW
will help LIL forward the idea of increasing access to information through
decentralized technologies.
"FFDW is
on a mission to preserve humanity’s most important information," FFDW’s
President and Chair Marta Belcher explained in a statement. "This
collaboration will enable the Library Innovation Lab to explore how
decentralized technologies can solve real-world challenges to preserve critical
data, and we’re thrilled to support the Library’s Democratizing Open Knowledge
program," Belcher added.
‘Protecting 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 top of the IPFS
distributed network. Filecoin’s native crypto asset, filecoin
(FIL), has increased 47.3% against the USD, and FIL is up 67.1% during the
past 14 days. At the end of May, Protocol Labs announced that it was
working with the Maryland-based defense contractor and aerospace business,
Lockheed Martin, to bring decentralized storage concepts to space.
According to FFDW’s announcement last Wednesday, LIL and FFDW plan
to fight linkrot, explore the creation of strong dark archives, and protect
valuable research data. LIL has already built tools and websites
like perma.cc, opencasebook.org, and the LIL Caselaw Access
Project. Through collaborative efforts, LIL and FFDW want to address how
technology can help establish "trustworthy sources" and the
"long-term preservation of digital information."
0 Comments