Question

In this unit, you learned how historians use primary sources to study the past. Today, many records of our lives can only be found online. Those records, however, can be lost if their creators choose to delete them. Do we have an obligation to future generations to preserve our online records? If so, how do we balance the preservation of online content with our own right to privacy in the present? If you think we don’t have this obligation, why not?
Discussion history 1

Answer 1

I think it's a good idea that we get conscious as a society about preserving important documents, which safety we may take for granted because they're stored online. However, when it comes to content that is harder to categorize as either public or private, we need to think more carefully about how we make that distinction.

In the past, people wrote stuff on notepads in their home or kept diaries which should be considered private; and you could also write a book and release it or letters to the newspaper which would be considered public. Now we can also do those things but there are platforms that place our information in between, like cloud storage or social media. Is a facebok post private or public?

I believe the law should adapt in order to protect our information against disclosure and make the distinctions between public and private affairs in online platforms more clear to keep a balance.

Hope this helps!