Burning the Libraries - Bombing the Data Centres

I'm a book fiend. Ever since I was a child, I've been sneaking over to a strange bookcases, and quickly reading as much as possible of what interests me.

This can lead you to some fairly interesting discoveries. As I mostly buy my books from Amazon these days, I don't browse so much. I specifically purchase what I was recommended or intended to purchase. Online I don't go in with one book in mind and come out with three.

But still other people's bookshelves lead me to interesting new material. Having worked my way through all the things I wanted to read on my boyfriend's shelf, I was left last night with Fermat's Last Theorem, by Simon Singh.

I am not a maths fiend. I had avoided this book, which describes the solution of Fermat's Last Theorem, the World's Most Famous Mathematical Problem.

*snore*

But last night I wanted to read myself to sleep, so I figured the book would serve its purpose.

Except it kept me awake. 77 pages into the paperback and I had to force myself to put the book down and put the light off.

Apart from the fact the book is well written and explains maths in a way that even my father (a maths teacher) never did, it contains so much of the story of knowledge. It describes the building of the library at Alexandria, and its destruction. It describes scholars fleeing the flames clutching anything they could find. And it describes how these precious manuscripts and books were protected and persecuted throughout the following centuries.

What struck me most was the fact that the books stored knowledge. And normal people, whose brains can't contain all that knowledge, went to the libraries, to the books to access what they needed when they needed it.

The destruction and dissipation of the knowledge set the development of mathematics and other disciplines back by centuries.

Today so much useful information is stored across the world on servers. One rare book in a hallowed library in Trinity College Dublin can be scanned in and put online, where thousands of people can access it simultaneously. On a smaller scale, I have documents that I never print, that exist only on my laptop or Google documents space.

Microsoft is buying old bean fields in the US. They're not going to be planting seeds. They plan to build the huge data centres that will be needed to cope with our data storage and processing demands. Google operates scores of data centres, and is building more (read more at the Guardian).

As more and more information goes on line, and more and more information is just created and only exists online, it feels like we're creating the digital equivalent of the library of Alexandria. Something huge and precious, only this time it's accessible to millions across the globe, 24/7/365.

But this worries me. I don't really understand data storage. I once had my laptop and 3 year's of work fried in a matter of seconds. This taught me the value of back-up systems. But a back-up is just as vulnerable to corruption or destruction as the original.

Our access to information and the world's knowledge has never been so widespread. But what systems do we have in place to protect online knowledge? Can we expect to see modern-day barbarians - knowledge terrorists - attack the world's data centres in an attempt to destroy the information they disagree with? Have we strategies for data conservation and protection?

I suspect my 1GB memory stick isn't quite up to the job.