Should we save These Memories Won't Last?

Begin this year, cartoonist Stu Campbell released These Memories Won't Last, a webcomic that makes full use of the capabilities of HTML5 and current internet browsers. The webcomic has music, minor animations, and all kinds of visual effects. The work is about Campbell's grandfather and his struggle with Alzheimer's. Cambell uses the medium perfectly to create a both a sense of urgency and a strong haze, as if everything is lost while you are reading it. He wrote the piece in part to preserve the life stories of his grandfather in some way, but odd is it then that he picked the medium most susceptible to changes in technology. 

Even as he was creating These Memories Won't Last, browser updates kept breaking his webcomic. A review by The Webcomic Police just a few months after the webcomic's release already complained about their browser not being able to handle it correctly. As I am writing this, I can no longer access the website... Why would Campbell decide to preserve his grandfather's life in such a fragile medium, in such a fragile form?

Well, being able to reach a large audience is part of it. In an interview with CNET, Campbell stated that, for him, "it's important ... to adapt and present our stories in an easily consumable way." But it goes deeper than that. Campbell notes that people rely on their personal devices to keep their memories, be they photographs or contact information. But, to quote Campbell: "as devices die and software becomes outdated, a lot of these memories might be lost. In a similar sense ... [my grandpa] is also a source of memory and one day he will be lost and so will all his memories ..." And, I suppose, this is the sad truth.

These Memories Won't Last isn't really about preserving the memories of Cambell's grandpa; it is primarily about how information, knowledge, and memories get lost over time. This is clearly depicted in the webcomic itself as each panel disappears once it is read, but it is also how the whole webcomic is set up. Campbell's work here is not supposed to survive: it will disappear just like everything else.

This fits the webcomic perfectly. In the 21 years in which webcomics have been an accessible medium, many works have disappeared and become unavailable. However, many popular webcomics have been saved from this fate. Kid Radd, RPG World, and various other webcomics have been downloaded by fans and reuploaded once the website went down. In the case of Kid Radd, some technical changes had to be made to keep the webcomic functional on current browsers, but it works.

As an Eisner-nominated webcomic, should These Memories Won't Last be protected in a similar way? You can wonder if that goes against the whole point of the webcomic. There would be some technological difficulties, but you'd be surprised what big fans can be capable of. I wonder if archiving it goes right against the point of the work. These are all just stray thoughts at this point that I can't make a consistent thread from, but it is an interesting question nonetheless. I do know that I already feel frustrated that I can't reread it while writing this piece.