Archiving The Internet

This post is mostly a shout-out to Dark0ne over on Nexus for some rescue work he is doing, but underlying that is a serious concern about social history.

As regular readers will be aware I am currently working through sermon notes, amongst other things, for a preaching series taking a fresh look at St. Paul's New Testament letter to the Galatian churches. Our understanding of 1st-Century writings, especially the New Testament, has been transformed by discoveries over the past half-century or so of ancient documents showing what life was like in those times. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a well-known example, of course, but there have been many more documents found, less well-known but still giving important insights.

Meanwhile archivists are struggling to read records saved - 'permanently' - to various forms of tape and optical disk archive just a few decades ago.

An important part of late-twentieth and, especially, early twenty-first century social interraction on the Internet has been various forms of modding communities. Modding is where users of computer games create their own additional material: sometimes just fixes for problems that the original game creators considered too minor (or hard) to fix; sometimes minor changes to the appearance of in-game entities; occasionally even significant amounts of extra content, such as new areas or new quests. A lot of this modding was done (is still done, if it comes to that) for free, as a way of sharing enjoyment and as a way of gaining appreciation and reputation. Around these game changes grew discussion groups for commenting on them, seeking guidance about how to solve technical problems, and just general chit-chat.

From a social history point of view this sort of thing is invaluable as a record of how the Internet, including its various forms of 'social media', developed. But's it's also important material for economists and others as there is often no money involved, yet modders spend ludicrous amounts of time and effort creating their work, which they then share openly. I've shared a couple of short quest/story mods myself, for Dragon Age - the work involved for even small mods was stunning; I can't even begin to imagine what some of the largest mods would have taken. Inevitably there will be other reasons in future for wanting a record of such things that we can't even imagine at present.

So I consider it wonderful that Nexus, and Dark0ne in particular, are transferring mods, including their attached information, from the once-massive but now closed modding site FileFront across to the Nexus network itself.

"Back in the middle of 2015, FileFront.com quietly shut the doors to its various gaming hub sites (which were much like Nexus sites for game mods back in their hayday in the early to mid 2000s). Over the past few years File Front was extremely out-dated, slow or outright broken in many areas, lacking some TLC that it needed despite still having an active contingent of core users who still frequented their forums. ... 

As a result, we’ve been working to save as many files from the File Front sites as possible and finding the best method to port them into our Nexus system. As File Front sites were largely like Nexus sites are now in terms of structure, we felt that focusing on the File Front files side of things would be in everyone’s best interest. The focus wasn’t just on not losing the files, but on saving the category structure, screenshots, file descriptions and author information that is actually what made the original File Front sites usable and easier to navigate for the games they supported. ... 

We don’t expect these sites to be popular or demanding on our servers, but I couldn’t sit and idly watch tens of thousands of mods for games I grew up with be lost to the internet forever."

Nice one, Dark0ne!

Mark: Why?

I've been working quite intensively with Mark's Gospel over several months now, in detail and - especially - as a whole, and I'm left with the feeling that I never really knew it before. It is so much less a simple history or biography and so much more an open-ended account filled with pace and emotion, confusion, uncertainty and pain. So I wonder, why did Mark write it?

Something we may not realise about those days is that written records of people and events were seen as much less reliable than an oral history. A document is written by just one person, often with an axe to grind, whereas an oral record is owned and protected by the community. An oral record will typically be formed and shaped by eye-witnesses, then told and retold amongst people who have heard it before and will complain about changes and inaccuracies. So why would Mark write down what Jesus did?

In many ways I am still in mid-ponder on this, but my initial thoughts are that Mark had two reasons for doing so: because the communities which had safeguarded the oral record that far were being disrupted, and because the communities were being disrupted.

As I said above, an oral record is trusted because it is owned and protected by its community. During the early-to-mid sixties AD the community in Rome was heavily persecuted, its leaders executed, and its members scattered. Then the communities in Galilee and Judea got caught up in the Jewish rebellion from 66 AD. And in 68 and 69 AD, following Nero's suicide, the empire as a whole faced an ensuing civil war, including Antioch and Alexandria, two more centres of Christian community.

So the oral record was being damaged, at just the time that key eye witnesses were being killed (or just dying). Mark had been very close to Peter and Paul in Rome and knew their stories about Jesus well ... but there was no guarantee he would survive himself. So a written record is the lesser of two evils: at least there would still have been enough eye witnesses, and those who had heard the eye witness stories, to attest to the truthfulness of Mark's retelling.

But Mark's Gospel is about more than that.

From Paul's early letters it is clear that many in the early churches expected Jesus to return within their lifetimes - thirty-odd years had gone by since Jesus' resurrection, what was going on?

More important though would have been the terrible suffering the Christian community in Rome had gone through, that the communities in Galilee and Judea were going through, and that communities in Syria and Egypt would have been afraid would come to them soon. These were people living good lives as they followed Jesus together and awaited his return; why were they suffering?

I think that is the key question behind Mark's telling of the events of Jesus' ministry. One person's written record may be less reliable than a community's telling, but it is more useful for making a point.

Mark's Gospel account says it is the beginning of good news, not the end. It says it is about Jesus who is the Messiah, the Son of God, affirmed by God and by man. But this Jesus suffered and died, and tells his followers that they too will suffer and die. Following Jesus doesn't protect you from suffering and persecution, it makes it more likely!

Mark's account shows the disciples permanently confused, always a step or two behind, often afraid. Jesus, meanwhile, keeps talking about an upside down Kingdom where death is the path to life and humiliation is the path to glory - exactly the kind of things which had been happening in Rome.

Mark is telling his readers not to get discouraged, their experience is not a sign that God's plan has gone wrong, but a sign that it is progressing.

If the disciples were shown as confused and afraid, how much more was Peter the one who always seemed to get things wrong. Yet Mark's readers had known a Peter who was the strong leader of their church; Peter had denied Jesus once, now he had willingly given his life for him. If Peter can change like that then so can any of them.

Mark leaves his writing open-ended: will the women overcome their fear and confusion and tell their story? Will the disciples go back to Galilee, to meet Jesus in their daily lives and to continue to follow him there? Will the Christian community in Rome, and throughout the empire, be able to go back to their lives? Will they be able to find Jesus there, in the midst of devastation, and can they walk with him again?

"Why?" remains a live question today. Mark provides no simple answer, but points to a person; a person who leads us through an upside-down world toward a Kingdom of justice and peace. His question is: "Will you follow?".