Specifics are easy

I'm talking about history. No matter how much time people spend worrying about their legacy, history is mostly decided by people looking back, not people looking forward.

My point is, communication used to be mostly committed to physical media that had a usable lifetime measured at least in hundreds of years, if not thousands. Today? Most stuff disappears after a few decades. Unless, as you said, you take explicit (and costly) measures to roll it over for another generation. And like I said, we don't know what's going to be important to people in a hundred years.

One example from medicine: We want to know how many people died from a recently-documented condition, say lead poisoning from paint. We don't have hospital records -- any cases would have been diagnosed as something else -- but we do have diaries and news stories and incidental documentation we can use to make some estimates.

We have the historically important information by accident. The intentionally maintained records didn't have what we need. With magnetic media, we won't have accidental history any more. Only the stuff that was so obviously useful that it was worth the expense to preserve it.

'It' is indeed about keeping some pathways Open.. via intelligent >premeditation<
(however arduous: yet doable In Future IF.. someone wants that sort of info (enough!) for purposes yet unconceived.

Lead paint example is excellent; medicine is Such a reactionary pseudo-science.. and MDs are crammed full of latin names during that 4?-year cram-course 24/7.
(They end-up so often, >next< "diagnosing" some non-specific-itis == We Haven't a Clue, etc.)

[rhetorical question]
Even today: how l o n g shall. it. take. for the autopsy on the Greed Heads most directly-responsible for the Las Vegas Bets LOST??
--but *NOT* 'lost'* (in continuous profits) to the actual Perps whose arrant knavery merely enriched them further?
[/qed]

'Course they Own the mass media; wonder what-possibly that might have to do with ...?
the water-cooled shredders and other burials of incriminating evidence ... surely the macerating of important e-mails, docs etc. As we speak.

We are so corrupt that the micro-Cheney unit is irrelevant--we need the Mega-Cheney to capture the full measure of our lie-based self-modifying 'history' machine.

(Irrelevant to topic, of course: you speak of easing the work of cultural anthropologists yet to come; they concern themselves -hourly- with covering all the Greed-tracks possible.)
Immanent corruption in the species transliterates to guaranteed infinite loopholes in the fabrication of 'governance' rulez. Wash, rinse..
DAMN how we LIE/always Have Lied) to our kids. I recall this civics course..

No wonder there's an appetite for speed, coke, weed, etc.
ANYoldTHING to escape some/any! deep, emotional Awareness of the actual nature of today's maya.
[Thanx , Sanskrit!, for some timeless words with fucking-Clear Referents which can't be spun by your daily Masters of Cupidity]
==ie Don't even Try! Mr. Candidate Rmoney.. ... but you Will.

Rest Case: We're Fucked. Relax and enjoy the soap opera, though for you'unses with kinder?
sincere condolences, all things considered. Fortunately for them is that they have a great capacity for Hope, which is never a bad thing. The best shall carve out an oasis amidst the madness. It ain't Götterdammerung, by a long shot: that mindset is reserved only for those who expected continuing infinite Consumption of everything. Heh..

Welcome to IWETHEY!