I've known about this for a while, and I have ten year old CDs that have gone south (and a surprising number that are still ok...) but sadly the technology isn't there to make this feasible yet. I have spools upon spools of DVDs, and I simply can't afford to back them all up and reburn them - financially or time-wise.
Sad, but at least my interests change enough in ten years that MOST of them won't matter that much. Still, it would suck to pull one from the library and find it unreadable!
This is a huge problem for government too. Back in the day, to comply with various regulations for achiving govt. publications, it was easy enough to have the GPO print off a few extra copies of any given publication and send it over to the Lib of Congress or the Nat'l Archives (depending on what it was). Now, so many agencies product papers, reports, etc. exclusively in electronic format, it's hard for them to know what exactly to save and how to save it.
I wrote a paper a couple years ago on this. Talking to library scientists and archivists (two of the most action-packed jobs in the world, I imagine), the general consensus is that in 100 years, we'll know more about govt records in the 19th and 20th centuries than our current period.
That isn't stopping the govt, however, from paying millions to contractors like Lockheed from developing proprietary storage for electronic records, along with crawlers to ensure electornic publications from govt website get stored.
I archived my home movies shot on 8mm/16mm/and videotape to DVD and keep the original source material in a cool, dry dark place. In a few years, I'll copy the DVDs again and/or archive them to whatever format is current at the time. Same with a small selection of photos.
The other stuff is not worth saving. Archive only what matters, or everything gets lost in sea of crap.
Well, I also consider that any truly important documents will either be part of public record that I can retrieve, or eventually lose relevance as their purpose is outlived. Photos can pass between thumb drives. As gigabytes get cheaper by the bit, swapping and exchanging will be a breeze. As system buses get faster, transfer times will become a snap. Movies I loved on my hard drive will either lose my interest or can be repurchased or rented years later on whatever new-fangled format is out.
My porn?
Well, I could always get married, and make my own.
The vast majority of stuff saved on your computer is complete trash that should fade away and degrade with the medium that's holding it.
Anything truely important -- public records of land deeds, titles, wills, etc., -- are almost all stored on mediums and through solutions where a party is interested in keeping that material working and relevant.
Your Bachelor degree thesis on Crime & Punishment, saved in WordPerfect 2 format on a floppy disk somewhere in the annals of your attick? Not important, and it's better left lost and gone forever.
The alternative is that our information will live on forever, and at the rate we are accumulating this data, that would probably be as bad as the concept that eventually it will rot. Converting it to different formats once a decade or so (which technology forces us to do anyway) is probably fine, and then when our bodies rot, chances are our descendants will conveniently forget to do this.
I always wonder if there is a Rosetta Room somewhere. Meaning a room filled with a variety of different media readers/displays and a way to power them.
The only thing I don't worry about is Macs. B/c real Mac users have at least three Macs in various forms chipmunked away under some stairs or in a display case that will still fire up and can be used.
@bosskev: This the word "least". I was also referring to "Real Mac Users". Not "True Mac Fanatics", "Mac Diehards", "Apple Fanbois", etc... Those will have more. Rememeber, a Apple Fanboi is a Real Mac User, but a Real Mac User isn't a Apple Fanboi.
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Sad, but at least my interests change enough in ten years that MOST of them won't matter that much. Still, it would suck to pull one from the library and find it unreadable!
03/26/09
I wrote a paper a couple years ago on this. Talking to library scientists and archivists (two of the most action-packed jobs in the world, I imagine), the general consensus is that in 100 years, we'll know more about govt records in the 19th and 20th centuries than our current period.
That isn't stopping the govt, however, from paying millions to contractors like Lockheed from developing proprietary storage for electronic records, along with crawlers to ensure electornic publications from govt website get stored.
03/26/09
03/26/09
The other stuff is not worth saving. Archive only what matters, or everything gets lost in sea of crap.
03/26/09
10010110101001010101010000010100^999999999999999999999999999
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My porn?
Well, I could always get married, and make my own.
03/26/09
You fail to realize that at the same time, the size of the data you are backing up will increase as well.
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Anything truely important -- public records of land deeds, titles, wills, etc., -- are almost all stored on mediums and through solutions where a party is interested in keeping that material working and relevant.
Your Bachelor degree thesis on Crime & Punishment, saved in WordPerfect 2 format on a floppy disk somewhere in the annals of your attick? Not important, and it's better left lost and gone forever.
03/26/09
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03/26/09
The only thing I don't worry about is Macs. B/c real Mac users have at least three Macs in various forms chipmunked away under some stairs or in a display case that will still fire up and can be used.
03/26/09
* scoffs *
...at least three? Three?
* scoffs again *
Try rephrasing that with double digits and get back to me.
* heads to kitchen for sandwich *
* trips over Quadra 840AV *
* landing face first into "Flower Power" iMac *
03/26/09
I need to listen to some Avril now...
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;)
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