When digital knowledge disappears

In October I gave a Campfire presentation about Digital Permaculture for the Permaculture Association in the UK. The Campfire series is a space where practitioners share ideas, projects, and experiments with the wider permaculture community.

As part of the event, the talk was recorded. I expected that the recording would eventually appear online, so that others could access the content afterwards.

What followed was an unexpected lesson in digital fragility.

Over the following months I asked several times about the recording. Each time there were different understandable explanations: staff changes in the office, lost access to the YouTube account, a crashed laptop, and eventually a data recovery attempt. After the issue was raised publicly I received an apology. 

Things like this happen. Digital files disappear more often than we like to admit.

But the whole situation highlights something important: digital knowledge is surprisingly fragile if we often do not actively design systems that protect it. Often associations have no policy, no backup strategy nothing. What would happen if the PAB would loose the list of all PDC participants? 

A recording stored on a single computer is not resilient. Access to a YouTube account held by one person is not resilient. Knowledge that exists only inside an organisation’s workflow is not resilient.

In permaculture we often talk about redundancy, diversity, and resilience in ecological systems. Digital systems require the same thinking.

Resiliency in digital systems is key

A resilient digital knowledge system might include:

• redundant storage and backups
• shared access instead of single-account ownership
• distributed publication instead of a single platform
• personal archiving of important materials

Ironically, this experience reinforced the very topic of my talk: Digital Permaculture.

Digital knowledge ecosystems need the same care as ecological ones. If we want ideas to circulate and survive, we must design the systems that hold them with resilience in mind.

Since the recording of the talk appears to be lost, I already shared the presentation itself. That way the ideas can still circulate and hopefully contribute to the ongoing discussion about how permaculture principles apply in the digital world.

Or just buy my Digital Permaculture book.