Can we preserve knowledge … forever?

April 24, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The episode examines whether humanity can preserve its knowledge, stories, and records indefinitely amid rapid technological change, legal restrictions, and environmental loss. It centers on three distinct preservation strategies that confront obsolescence in different domains: digital files, biological molecules, and the physical surface of the planet itself.

Preserving Web History Through Systematic Capture

Brewster Kahle describes the Internet Archive’s approach to collecting web pages before they vanish. The core mechanism is the Wayback Machine, which crawls links every two months and stores billions of URLs. This has allowed recovery of deleted material such as Donald Trump’s tweets and entire vanished sites like GeoCities. The archive also repairs broken citations in Wikipedia and digitizes books referenced there. Kahle notes that most web pages last only about a hundred days before alteration or deletion, and paywalls plus login requirements now make complete capture harder. Anyone can contribute by using the “Save Page Now” tool, which the service processes roughly eighty times per second.

Encoding Information in DNA for Long-Term Stability

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What you'll learn

1 (01:10) **Introduction to Caper in the Castro** - First gay video game created in 1989 by CM Ralph during the AIDS crisis
2 (03:19) **Preservation of the original game** - CM Ralph's disc rediscovered and recovered in 2017
3 (06:17) **Broader problem of digital obsolescence** - Formats, pages, and data disappearing rapidly
4 (07:15) **Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive** - Mission to build a digital library of everything
5 (08:49) **Wayback Machine functionality** - Crawling links and preserving deleted or changed content
6 (10:23) **Ongoing archiving challenges** - Paywalls, broken links, and missed collections like Napster
7 (13:12) **Legal battle over e-books** - Internet Archive scans physical books to lend digital copies

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Information feels more accessible than ever, but the ways we store data are surprisingly fragile. Can we save anything forever? This hour, TED speakers explore preserving our past, present and future. Guests include game designer CM Ralph, digital librarian Brewster Kayle, molecular biologist Dina Zielinksi and archeologist Chris Fisher.

Original air date: January 27, 2023

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