The Dark Ages, as we know, refers not to a lack of knowledge but to a lack of records. Centuries of history — from the end of the Roman Empire to the emergence of the English state — are vague and contested, recorded only in a handful of texts written many years later. 

But the 7th century monks who tirelessly scribed away on vellum can be forgiven for this. They were trying their best. They lived at a time of unimaginable hardship, facing the constant threat of violence and the uncertainties of subsistence farming. 

We, however, should know better about our legacy of data preservation. We operate with an unshakeable belief that the files we save now will be accessible in five, ten, or twenty years, despite having lived through multiple periods of technology obsolescence. 

Punch cards. Floppy disks. Even the humble (and easily damaged) USB drive. Each advance in data storage technology brings with it the necessity to retrieve and store the information from the previous method. 

The internet is already decaying. Many websites … no longer function

Consider the infamous 1980s Domesday project, an effort to create an updated, nation-wide survey of ordinary life to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book. Whilst we are still able to read the original Domesday Book almost a millennia later — whether in manuscript form or published as a book — we cannot access the Domesday Project data drives from forty years ago.

(I’m simplifying slightly here. Whilst efforts have been made to retrieve the data, the ordinary person has very little means of accessing it because little consideration was given to the longevity of the technology.)

The internet is already decaying. Many websites — especially those serving niche or individual interests — no longer function, creating for researchers a dizzying web of broken links and Wayback Machine snapshots.

But this is not just an information problem. It is a simple fact that our entire society is wholly reliant on computer systems. We saw the debilitating effect of a cyberattack on NHS computer systems earlier this year, and it is not implausible that a state or rogue actor could cause a complete societal breakdown by targeting the computer networks which manage our banking, transport, security, and communication systems.  

There is also a darker implication. Digital media can be easily manipulated without there being a record of the change. Many films and TV shows, when released to streaming, often have slightly different music (due to licensing issues) or, if they are somewhat dated, have been selectively edited at the whims of the moral scolds who think audiences are incapable of viewing media in the context in which they were created. Paraphrasing Orwell might be a little trite, but it’s true: rewriting every record becomes a lot easier if you leave no paper trail. 

Start by making an effort to create physical copies of your most precious documents and photos

Before you think me too hysterical, there are things which we as individuals can do to help. Start by making an effort to create physical copies of your most precious documents and photos. It is extremely common to lose your phone and for thousands of precious memories to be lost. Backing them up to a cloud is a good idea, but it also bears the risk of relying on a single point of failure (more on that later). 

Fundamentally, do you want future generations to be able to thumb through family photographs in the way that we can see and hold photos from over a hundred years ago? Young people already yearn for tangibility. The trend of taking photos on instant development cameras and pinning the polaroids to your mood board or wall (and then, obviously, taking a picture of them with your phone and posting to Instagram) demonstrates our desire for tangible evidence of our existence. 

Create multiple modes of recovery. There is a (perhaps apocryphal) Galilean principle that the steps we take to make things safer often make them more vulnerable. One of these is relying on a single form of Two-Factor Authentication. Earlier in the year I suddenly lost access to my phone number. I had linked all my crucial accounts — banking, work email, website, social media — to my phone number so that I could only log in if I received a passcode. This is a sensible security measure. Of course, now that I could no longer use my number, I could no longer receive access codes. The thing which was supposed to make my online life safer made it, instead, much harder. I lost access to pretty much everything. Fortunately, I was able to recover the majority of my accounts — I had multiple recovery options and ways of proving my ownership and identity — but I had to sacrifice my newly-created work email because I could not prove that I owned it. Since then, I urge everyone to ensure that they have at least two methods of Two-Factor Authentication and account recovery.

I am reminded of an off-hand joke in an old episode of Supersizers, the stellar show where Sue Perkins and Giles Coren ate and dressed their way through history. In the 1980s episode, as I recall, one of them joked that, having come into possession of a fancy new microwave, they had sold off their oven because microwaves were the future and every meal was to be cooked in one. We may laugh, but this encapsulates much of the thinking which contributes to our digital over-reliance — don’t worry darling, I’ve got rid of all those dusty old archives because they can all be stored on this handy magnetic cartridge/floppy disk/website/dropbox instead. 

You may think me a paranoid digital luddite, but as a geriatric Zoomer — born in 1999, growing up in the last gasps of the analogue age — maybe my generation is best placed to fully realise this problem and become the guardians of physical records. Joni Mitchell was right — you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. As society devolves into Morlocks, with the same literacy level as post-Threads Sheffield, perhaps we will become the knowledge-bearing Eloi — although hopefully we don’t get eaten.