TED Radio Hour Can we preserve knowledge … forever?
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Apr 24, 2026 
Chris Fisher, archaeologist who maps landscapes with airborne LiDAR. Dina Zielinski, molecular biologist exploring DNA as ultra-dense data storage. Brewster Kahle, digital librarian who built the Wayback Machine to archive the web. They discuss how LIDAR creates lasting records of sites. They explain DNA as a durable medium for critical archives. They tackle web ephemerality and large-scale digital preservation.
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Wayback Machine Preserves Ephemeral Web History
- Brewster Kahle built the Internet Archive to preserve ephemeral web content and aims to be a digital Library of Alexandria.
- The Wayback Machine crawls around a billion URLs a day and saves snapshots so journalists and lawyers can retrieve removed or changed web content.
Use Save Page Now To Preserve Webpages
- Anyone can help archive web pages by using archive.org's Save Page Now feature to preserve content at risk of disappearing.
- Brewster notes it's used about 80 times a second and is practical for saving obituaries or articles you care about.
Digital Licensing Undermines Traditional Ownership
- Digital files complicate ownership because publishers license e-books rather than sell them, allowing content to be altered or revoked.
- Brewster frames this as a social choice about whether digital knowledge will be public or locked by private companies.