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

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: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?

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

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?