Bits of History

In 1951, the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration released an educational film called “Duck and Cover.” It featured an animated turtle named Bert, who demonstrated how children should protect themselves in the face of a nuclear attack. The thesis of the movie was something like a “nuclear attack might happen at any moment, so we should all be prepared.” At the same time, videos were made by various military agencies showing the structural impact of nuclear bomb blasts; these movies suggest that ducking and covering would not, in fact, have been a very effective technique.

What lessons we might draw from clips like these is a question beyond the scope of this column, but it’s interesting to consider that, thanks to the collaborative efforts of a few large companies and nonprofit organizations, these clips and similar historical records are increasingly available on the Internet in digital form.

Almost every creative or informative work made today is digitized during the production or distribution process. Books are written on computers, movies are released on DVD, artwork is photographed (though this certainly can’t capture all of its nuances), and television and radio programs are recorded and streamed online. Accessibility is certainly a concern, and copyright a closely related one, but the bits, which unlike analog media can be perfectly preserved indefinitely, are safely stored.

The intellectual output of mankind in the three or so millennia leading up to 1995 is not faring as well. Google announced last year that it planned to begin digitizing material in university libraries such as our own, but the initiative has been mired in controversy, hindered both by publishing houses that fear for the value of their copyrights and by stodgy academics who worry that a corporation might make a poor gatekeeper for the world’s information.

Google has had more success with a recent pilot program in which they’ve agreed to digitize and put online the video content of the National Archives, including United Newsreel Motion Pictures from the Second World War, NASA documentaries from the ’60s, and a variety of other footage. Google video (video.google.com), once viewed by college students only as a tool for wasting time watching clever Super Bowl commercials and home movies of suburban teenagers blowing up Pepsi bottles with Mentos, may yet serve a more valuable purpose.

Another organization, the Internet Archive (archive.org), was founded in 1996 to store old copies of the Internet so that we can now look at the contents of the web from years past. In 1999, thanks to some additional funding, it grew to include text, audio, software, and videos such as the one mentioned at the beginning of this column (which is a part of the Prelinger Archives of ephemeral films). The Archive advertises itself as a place to store information, and it accepts contributions. Since it’s a nonprofit organization that relies largely on donations to operate, it lacks some of Google’s punch when it comes to brute-force digitization of old works. Libraries, including our own, which have been working on this problem for the better part of the past decade, face similar financial woes.

The importance of digitization goes well beyond the mere benefits of secure storage and widespread distribution networks, though even on their own, these things will dramatically alter our interaction with content. Digitizing works, particularly those in the public domain or under reuse-friendly licensing schemes such as Creative Commons (creativecommons.org), allows them to be catalogued, searched, shared, chopped up, and incorporated into new works. It’ll make the difficult work of historians easier, it will allow us to find connections that were before obfuscated by distance or form, and it will allow us to better incorporate our forbears’ culture into the present culture.

These are, by and large, relatively uncontroversial aims in principle, but we should be actively wary of those who might get in their way. Copyright holders are obvious culprits—we should all aim to learn about fair use and be willing to use it as a defense wherever applicable in our work. Availability of funds is also a problem—Harvard should continue to lead other academic institutions in putting aside money for the digitization of films, texts, and audio in its own collection, particularly material that is Harvard-owned or in the public domain.

Chances are, we’ll learn some interesting things in the process. For example, another video clip on archive.org is a 1947 social education film called “Are You Popular?” It offers some dating advice which romantically depraved Harvard students might do well to follow. Gentlemen: when you make dates, give a girl plenty of notice and several options so that she doesn’t feel rushed and has an understanding of your budget. And ladies, the video suggests that you write down your dates in an appointment book, so that you never forget to leave time to do your hair and nails before going out for a night on the town.



Matthew A. Gline ’06 is a physics concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.