POAP 🏅

POAP collectors will appreciate Checkpoints by Ruby Justice Thelot (@being-on-line), a book for “all who dedicate their lives to preserving digital memories.” 

Select quotes in 🧵 (1/9)

pm, professor, designer doing research on digital communities, AI and the metaverse

The titular “Checkpoints” refers to a YouTube video where users started writing a “checkpoint” personal life update in comments. The video was taken down suddenly in 2021, “a reminder of how communities can lose their entire histories by relinquishing memory to third-party platforms.” (2/9)

“The story of Checkpoints reminds us to be fully aware of the infrastructure we use when we build community in digital realms. Are the structures sturdy? Who controls them?” (3/9)

Luckily archivist @rebane2001 had preserved the video and comments, along with 1M+ other videos (so far): “I’m really glad to help people get their comments back, so they can still reflect back on them and be happy about it.” (4/9)

“People like [rebane2001] play a role that unfortunately a lot of Big Tech giants have failed to play, which is to safeguard and safekeep our [digital] cultural histories and memories… Without access to these artifacts, we will be forced to piece together our personal and collective histories in a manner that is unmoored from our actual past.” (6/9)

“So much of the culture of any given community hinges on members being able to parse through that community’s digital history, to trace the evolution of its language, in-jokes, and memes.” 

A shining example of a community using POAPs to preserve this history is Rocket Pool https://collections.poap.xyz/rocket-pool/2201 (7/9)

“We are on the eve of a new era of the internet, one bereft of history and lore. We can think of it as a chapter of civilization built on an empty shell… We entrust our memories to a system, and the system fails to maintain them.” (8/9)

Check out Checkpoints here: https://www.irrelevantpress.com/store/pre-sale-a-cyberarchaeology-of-checkpoints-ruby-thelot

In an interview with rebane2001, they discuss the importance of saving digital artifacts, and how a personal archive “enables retrieval in a way that is specific to you.” (5/9)