Back in my undergraduate days, I was listening to a lecture on scientific data preservation and backup. The professors were happy to introduce all the options available, including cloud storage, external hard drives, and even CDs back then. The aged professor let us know that he had used every single type of data storage, and they had all at one point failed. The key to data longevity is redundancy. When the CD breaks and the flash drive is lost, the cloud floats in to save the day.
It’s the data we love the most which is backed up most frequently. An excellent example of this phenomenon playing out at a cultural level is the Internet. Originally a military experiment in sharing data between multiple computers, our favorite virtual home had redundancy built into its core. As a social experiment, the Internet has a way of preserving the most popular treasures of cultural heritage, while tending to forget the less trendy. A single image is replicated millions of times, finding a home on countless individual computers and hard drives. Removing it from the cultural consciousness would be impossible. Another image, on a blog seldom read, could be lost forever if the owner takes it down before anyone could save it. These dynamic and contradictory properties make the Internet both permanent and transient, a living mirror of cultural evolution, albeit a fun-house mirror.
Despite the Internet’s utter ubiquity, it is still limited to, and contains the data of, one planet (for now). However, Starfleet maintains a database which would make our World Wide Web look like the tangle of cords you find behind your computer. Memory Alpha, a small planetoid in the Alpha Quadrant, holds the entire Federation central library. On their way to Memory Alpha with Lieutenant Mira Romaine, Kirk and crew encounter a terrible space storm. It is Lt. Romaine’s first trip into deep space, and she was particularly affected by the strange lights, fainting and then making an odd groaning noise upon recovery. The storm hits the planetoid as well, knocking out the main computer core. All staff are found dead, except one woman who shows the same symptoms as the lieutenant just before dying. As Lt. Romaine’s symptoms become progressively worse, she sees visions of the future.
The strange light storm is determined to be a group of lifeforms. When the Enterprise fires phasers at it, the attack hurts Romaine. Spock discovers that her brain wave patterns have been altered by the alien horde, and they are taking over her body. The life forms evolved beyond corporal bodies and have been searching for a host since their planet, Zetar, was destroyed. They are the hopes, the desires, the dreams… the memory of Zetar. Although a fried hard-drive does not compare to destroying the collective memory of an entire planet, a human body does not make a suitable memory stick. McCoy fought to save Romaine’s life by putting her in a high pressure chamber, thereby driving the aliens out. Although the crew were quite happy with the result, one must wonder how much cultural richness was lost in a single incident.
Eventually, all traces of our existence will be eroded by the sands of time. The bits and pieces of our fleeting lives are recorded on any medium available to us in our lonely grasp toward some permanence. In the end, all will sooner or later be forgotten.
Hopeless Trekkie 