1086 Domesday Book Outlives 1986 Electronic Rival

mccalli writes :"Thought people might find this amusing. In 1986, the UK compiled an electronic domesday book. They used BBC Master computers to do it, and the result was put on laserdisc. I actually used this project whilst at school. This article states that nothing can now read these merely 15-year old discs. The original, written approx. 1086, is still doing fine thank you very much." Sounds like a good candidate for Bruce Sterling's Dead Media Project. (Speaking of Sterling, the "graying cyberpunk" has an interesting article in the Austin Chronicle on the upcoming SXSW Interactive conference called "Information Wants to be Worthless" -- thanks to reader ag3n7.) Update: 03/03 19:38 GMT by T : That's "domesday" not "doomsday."

Comments

Does anybody actually care?

[John Jorsett]

Does it really matter if the disks are unreadable? If the data wasn't important enough that somebody didn't say, "hey, we need to transfer this stuff to new media," then maybe it's not such a big deal. At a minimum, I presume that it means that the data wasn't being used by anyone, or they'd have noticed that it was about to become unavailable.

Re:Does anybody actually care?

[j7953]

If the data wasn't important enough that somebody didn't say, "hey, we need to transfer this stuff to new media," then maybe it's not such a big deal.

That's probably true in this case, but with more and more "cultural works" being stored on digital media, I suspect case like this one will become more frequent in the future.

The thing that should make you really worried, though, is that simply transferring the stuff to new media might not even be possible.

Have you copied your VHS tapes to DVD yet? Oh, wait, you can't -- it's Macrovision protected and Macrovision filters are illegal. (This is already the case thanks to the DMCA.)

Will you copy your audio CDs to audio DVDs? Oh, wait, you can't read them in a computer, a computer that could copy them will be illegal by the time CDs are outdated (thanks to the SSSCA).

Yes, sure, all of the data will still be available in some central location at the publisher. But what if Disney forgets about some movie, just like someone forget about this laserdisc? How many content has already been lost thanks to online news services going out of business or corrupting their database or whatever, simply because none of their readers stored the content on his hard disk?

I assume that a large amount of online content has already been lost. Maybe [put some failed .com here] published a great article two years ago, which is now not available on the web any more, but someone still has a copy of it. Unfortunately that someone cannot legally publish it, thanks to copyright legislation. Yes, it can be published in about 90 years, but will that someone still live then? Will he have copied the data to his new computer whenever he got one? Will it even have beem possible for him to copy the data, or will an SSSCA-like computer have prevented that?

Re:Does anybody actually care?

[Angst Badger]

Does it really matter if the disks are unreadable? If the data wasn't important enough that somebody didn't say, "hey, we need to transfer this stuff to new media," then maybe it's not such a big deal. At a minimum, I presume that it means that the data wasn't being used by anyone, or they'd have noticed that it was about to become unavailable.

Wow, that's astonishingly short-sighted and narrow-minded. There are a lot of important things whose importance was not realized at the time, or for some time afterwards. The most obvious example that springs immediately to mind is Gregor Mendel's experimental work, upon which our entire understanding of genetics was originally based, and which went unpublished and ignored for years.

Unlike technical manuals, the value of other forms of information is not necessarily proportional to how recently they've been produced. Even in the hard sciences, studies designed to support theories subsequently disproven can be valuable sources of experimental data further down the road. Certainly something like a census could be immensely valuable to historians -- and only become more so the older it gets.

Moreover, a lot of valuable data is in danger of being lost not because it isn't worth anything or because no one notices it or wants to preserve it, but because the expense of transferring the data to new media (from, perhaps, acidified paper, microfilm, old digital media, or some other perishable product) is too high.

The key lesson here -- which I wish the easily-swayed-by-gee-whiz-technology crowd would clue into -- is that media companies think in terms of next quarter, not in terms of anything as vague and unprofitable as posterity. Preserving important information on digital media is little different from burning books. If you want permanence, you need good paper -- a centuries-old technology that the so-called digital revolution has absolutely nothing on in terms of permanence.

Media devices not information

[mgkimsal2]

"We're lucky Shakespeare didn't write on an old PC."

I can still access WordPerfect files from an old home computer from 1987. That computer still has a floppy drive which I can write files to. It still has the capability of connecting a null modem up to it for file transfer. Granted, that's not the easiest thing to do, but it's still accessible.

There HAVE to be some laserdisc readers someplace in the UK that can read this. The point they're probably making is 'be wary of putting too much faith in technology'. That's a good attitude to have, but simply putting a bit more thought into keeping the data available in multiple formats would help ensure no loss of access. Hell, this was a multimillion pound project - they couldn't burn any of this to conventional CDs too? Yes, you couldn't run out to Dixon's or BestBuy and get a CD burner for $100 like today, but I'd have thought a bit more technology was available to a multimillion pound project.

"Unfortunately, we don't know what we will do after that. We could store the data on desktop computers - but they are likely to become redundant in a few years. "

Yes, the desktops might, but the data won't. Put the data in normal, documented data formats, and put them on regular drives, CDs, ZIP disks, DVD, whatever. Don't put all your digital eggs in one basket, should be the lesson. OR, simply have a technology upgrade plan in place for data that is important enough to outlive the media on which it is contained. Data that was worth millions of pounds at one time should merit a stipend of a few thousand pounds a year to keep it accessible.

Re:Media devices not information

[praedor]

Nonetheless, NOTHING we've developed beats good 'ole paper for longterm storage and useability. It is an absolute certainty that in 50 years, 100 years, all your CDs, DVDs, floppies, zip disks, etc, etc, will be useless and any data stored thereon will be unreachable. Not so with books (REAL books, of course, not bogus e-books). Books 2000 years old are still accessible and readable.

The only way to protect information for the long haul is some form of printed format for the REALLY important stuff. Beyond that, the best you can do is faithfully keep copying data/information from a dying "standard" to the latest, greatest new "standard" which will be OK for a decade or so, then transfer again ad infinitum.

Obviously, for some things, the high-tech solution is useful and neato but for anything long-term (we're talking many decades to centuries to millenia) high-tech is not the most efficient or safest way to go.

Re:Media devices not information

[praedor]

Oh yeah, with regards to my "...the best you can do is faithfully keep copying data/information from a dying "standard" to the latest, greatest new "standard" which will be OK for a decade or so, then transfer again ad infinitum" statement, this only holds safe and longterm barring any sort of civilization-trashing catastrophy. All the dilligent saving of information from CD to DVD to crystal to whatever comes later will be for squat when something happens that reduces technical society to something simpler. All that nice stored data becomes useless trash whereas an ancient book remains accessible.

Original article somewhat contentious

[GSV NegotiableEthics]

The Observer article from which this is drawn is here.

From that article:

Betamax video players, 8in and 5in computer disks, and eight-track music cartridges have all become redundant, making it impossible to access records stored on them. Data stored on the 3in disks used in the pioneering Amstrad word-processor is now equally inaccessible.

Needless to say, the term redundant simply means that using standard equipment you'd have problems reading this data. But specialist media recovery firms maintain old machines and there are several that will convert your old 3-inch Amstrad disks or that Betamax wedding recording, for a fee.

The Domesday 1986 disks are undoubtedly difficult to access without specialist equipment, and that's the real problem--eventually any nascent technology will become obsolete and data will be lost. Eventually it will no longer be economic for data recovery companies to maintain their obsolete machines.

Paul Wheatley: "That means we have to find a way to emulate this data, in other words to turn into a form that can be used no matter what is the computer format of the future. That is the real goal of this project."

If they have any sense they'll store most of it on fiche and store that in good conditions.

Information vs POPULAR information

[phreakmonkey]

Shakespeare's work was never in danger of becoming "obsolete" and "unreadable" because it was popular.

Think about it. Pick a very popular recent source of art.. say, the Beatles. How many formats is their work stored in? In how many languages? Really, this is a good argument for Peer-to-Peer media sharing systems. It takes media that society considers important and replicates and archives it all over the world..

Much how popular folk songs have been passed from generation to generation via spoken or sung words, current media is being passed around the globe and stored on everything from hardcopy to harddrives to optical media.

The only information we have to worry about losing is that which is forgotten by the masses.. for it is in danger of not being replicated and passed around.

Re:Information vs POPULAR information

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yep. And as long as the Beatle's music is considered important enough by enough people (which is probably at least a few centuries, maybe longer -- "Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, and the Beatles" isn't a joke) it will continue to be transfered to whatever the storage media of the time are. That's the point that I think everyone crying "put it on paper" is missing: Of course electronic media are perishable, and of course whatever snazzy new high-capacity storage medium you're using right now will probably be obsolete in a decade, but as long as you can and do transfer from one medium to another, preferably backing up in multiple locations on multiple types of media, your data is more likely by far to survive for the ages than a single paper copy somewhere would be. That such effectively infinite copying and storage is possible is one of the wonders of the electronic age -- we just have to be smart enough to take advantage of it properly.

Re:Unless you don't use the Roman Alphabet...

[mmontour]

Also, what about text data which is unable to be displayed in ASCII such as scientific equations or charts?

Well, then you design some standard way to represent scientific symbols and equations with ASCII phrases. Given the wide use of TeX among scientists and mathemeticians, I would say this is a solved problem.

However, I agree with your point about foreign languages.

obsolete desktops.

[Restil]

I had a desktop computer 15 years ago. I can still read the media from it. Granted, 5 1/4 floppy drivess aren't exactly sold new in stores anymore, but I guarantee I can still find one if I need to. I worry more about the media itself being unreadable due to age rather than not having the required equipment to read it.

Is it really such a difficult project to simply upgrade your digital storage as time goes on? Even though people might see this as a waste of time, consider your savings in storage. Converting old media, especially old magnetic tapes (think nasa) to newer, longer lasting, and SMALLER media formats, just makes sense. Nasa isnt' going to suddenly quit collecting data, its going to continue. The savings in physical storage space alone would make it worth the effort. The fact that this information will then continue to be accessible for generations to come is just a benifitial side effect. :)

-Restil

Re:WYSIWYG vs Plain ASCII

[scsirob]

Don't bet on ASCII to *always work*. For a long time EBCDIC was the standard, and it's slowly fading away now...

People in the late 60's and early 70's thought they could always get their data back when they stored stuff on 7-track tape. Guess where that's gone.. I think a while ago /. had an article about the first Marriner deep space missions from which telemetry was stored on 7-track reel tape. Scientists are still analyzing the information it returned, but find they can't get to much of it anymore simply because the magnetic media has deteriorated.

There's not any real fix as of yet, and some of the digital information we create today will simply not survive time. An ASCII line with "This is a picture of DNA" has no meaning without the actual picture. The picture might be stored in an ASCII string format, but it will need to be encoded. So you're back to the "Word 1.0" issue, as no-one might remember how to decode and reproduce that picture 20 years from now.

We'll need to find a storage medium that can be decoded by the one engine that will not fade for a long time; The Human Brain.

We'd better care

[qweqwe]

It's even more than cultural work. Scientific work can be lost. Just because something is unimportant now, doesn't mean that it won't be in the future.

Take the case of the Aloutte satellite that was launched in 1967.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/8434/essay. htm
It collected tons of information about the ionosphere and stored that information on now obsolette tape. At the time, the information was processed and condensed and placed in an archive.

There are tonnes and tonnes of these tapes. Twenty years later, historical information on the o-zone layer became important. Since the original Aloutte researchers weren't looking for o-zone data, they never bothered to analyze that data. The only way to do that is to go to the original tapes.

The problem is, only a few machines can read these tapes and since the tape readers are *extremely* slow by todays standards, it will take years to transfer all that information to CD. What's worse is that some of the tapes are already worn out, so a good deal of information will be lost.

Just imagine what would have happened if the ancient greeks were so advanced that they stored all their information on CDs. We'd never get out of the dark ages, because people lost interest in preserving knowledge while Rome was crumbling.

All of Aristotle, Euclid, and other scientist's work would be on CDs that no-one knew how to read. No-one would even know what the CDs were for. They'd get as much respect as AOL CD, being used as frisbees, placemats, decorations, or just thrown in the trash.

Re:What will future people find of us in 10,000 ye

[sconeu]

A team of programmers including a 15-yr old broke the DVD encryption within a few years - I am sure that humans 10k+ years from now will be able to replicate that same type of work!

However, said team had some idea of the purpose behind that shiny silver disk, and some idea of what the plaintext should look like.

Consider 12000 CE.
You're an archaeologist, and you find a shiny silvery disk approximately 10 flurburbs in diameter. What is it for? It has some markings on one side that your specialist in dead languages tells you says, "Porky's 2: The Next Day". The other side apparently functions as a diffraction grating.

Now what?