I've seen some discussion recently about "e-portfolios" and the idea of providing everyone with "lifetime web space". See this educause article and comments on it here, and here, for example. While initially appealing, I have some misgivings about the idea, which I'd like to work through here.

The basic premise of these suggestions is laudable enough - each student to be provided with some sort of online repository, in which to store and publish work, qualifications and research. Such a repository forms a globally accessible indication of their development and abilities. This can be viewed as a next evolutionary step in the "read/write web" after the likes of FTP/HTTP and blogging, replacing the traditional functions of "transcript", "resumé", and "Curriculum Vitae" with a detailled and searchable "e-portfolio". Expanding this idea beyond the walls of existing learning establishments to incorporate all forms of lifelong learning leads to the suggstion of a more generic "lifetime web space" capable of storing, connecting, and searching anything.

However, I can see a few problems with this. In common with the original authors, I'll skip over the technical issues (things like storage provision, authentication and bandwidth) as they are all problems that are actively being persued in the context of existing internet services. I'm more concerned with more general issues.

One major problem is in the word "lifetime". Out here in the "real world", artefacts often persist beyond the death of the creator, and this has immense value. Not just the "big names" such as the drawings of DaVinci or the plays of Shakespeare, but the details of individual lives illuminate the study of history and human society. Any form of "lifetime web space" would really need to be perpetually maintained, to avoid losing this priceless archive of information.

Another problem is how to manage the content in these personal repositories. The web as a whole is filling up with obsolete information, broken links, spam and other junk. I find it hard to believe that any future "lifetime web space" will be any different. Generally, people have neither the time, skills, or motivation to keep such an intangible repository "tidy", especially if it is effectively limitless. People produce an enormous amount of stuff during their lives. Why make hard evaluation choices and laborious categorization or tagging, when you can just upload everything to your "infinite" lifetime web space. Including all the hundreds of cute kiddie scribbles, thousands of letters, notes and memos, millions of digital snapshots, months of video footage and so on. Add to this the issue of referencing external material. If you link to an external resource you can't rely on it in the long term - it might go away, it might change, it might begin to require authorization or payment. The only way to gather a collection of information and artefacts that make sense is to take a copy. Which is bound to lead to massive duplication and turn the lifetime space into even more of a hairball.

A third problem is one of longevity. The oldest web sites in the world are currently about 10 years old. Despite the efforts of the "wayback machine", a large proportion of the content that was once available is simply no longer in existence. Digital data is very easy to lose. Unlike books, paintings, or even the Vindolanda tablets, digital information needs to be actively maintained. If a hard drive stops spinning, the information is unavailable. If you have no reader for a digital format or medium, the information is unavailable. I have some software I once wrote, stored on an eight-inch floppy disk. I haven't seen an eight-inch disk drive in twenty years; I have some video files I can not play, because they were compressed using a hardware codec that is no longer available. We have reached this state in a few short years, and as both the amount of digital information to store, and the size and complexity of storage systems, increase the problem will only become greater. And all this is without a catastrophic accident or terrorist event such as an electromagnetic pulse which "takes out" a large area of the global network. It's not unusual to find a several-hundred-year-old book or painting in an attic, and still be able to make sense of it. To achieve that kind of longevity in a digital archive needs a major, coordinated, pessimistic approach. And that costs.

In conclusion, I can see that the idea of an "e-portfolio", with the specific limited purpose of representing achievement and skills in certain areas, and acting an online extension of the ideas of transcripts, resumés and CVs has merit. This approach is also likely to be achievable. The purpose of representing the owner when applying for work or study opportunities will act as a force to manage, tidy and hone the collection, filtering out inappropriate material, and emphasising the best work. Broadening the scope to include everything researched or produced during a lifetime both massively increases the complexity, and at the same time reduces the pressure to manage the information. I would worry very strongly that such repositories would become write-only virtual junk rooms, fragile, costly to maintain and so poorly organized that any value is hidden and largely inaccessible.