Digital Dark Ages?

angkor writes "The digital dark age--Will all the information from this computer age slowly vanish as our delicate hardrives expire? That's what it looks like. Better start printing everything out."

Comments

Re:Dark ages?

[GothChip]

Well, it's a new definition for "dark ages", that's for sure. I was under the impression that the defining characteristics of the dark ages was ignorance, suppression, warfare, famine, strife -- you know, BAD STUFF.

Actually, the Dark Ages are called that because there is very very little information about what happened in that period.

It's OK to be wrong.

[eclectric]

Actually, historically, a "Dark" age (there have been several... the so-called "Dark Ages" is merely the longest series of them in Medieval times) is a period of time *during* recorded history when the historical record is in pieces or non-existant. While other problems can be applied to a Dark Age, these are usually causes, but what defines a Dark age is the result: reduced historical record.

There were 2 or 3 in the Roman empire, one that I believe lasted about 30 years. Several more cropped up before and after Charlemagne. A much smaller one is happening with books produced in a specific timeframe in the early 20th century (I disremember which). Because of the acid in the paper, they'll deteriorate and fall apart rapidly. Luckily, project gutenberg is making an effort in getting the info out of books this old.

So, it's OK to be wrong.

Re:It's OK to be wrong.

[dvdeug]

A much smaller one is happening with books produced in a specific timeframe in the early 20th century (I disremember which). Because of the acid in the paper, they'll deteriorate and fall apart rapidly. Luckily, project gutenberg is making an effort in getting the info out of books this old.

Not completely. Project Gutenberg can only use books printed before 1923. When I go looking for books for Project Gutenberg, a lot of the ones in really bad shape (include acid damage) were printed between 1940 and the mid 1960s. I fear for the typewritten stuff, especially, as it's appropaching unreadability even if it's only 30 years old.

The other major worry is films. They were produced largely on nitrate stock, which is highly volitile and wasn't even stored by the Library of Congress, and without immediate help in some cases (not forthcoming for copyrighted films) those left may be lost forever.

Re:File formats are the core problem

[mikehunt]

Putting stuff on a CD-ROM will *not* preserve it
for eternity. Burnable CD-ROMS might last 50 years
if you keep then in a dark, temperature controlled
vault. Pressed CDs will last rather longer but
eternity is not an option with this kind of storage.

Re:The solution

[ahaning]

Better yet, request the Alexa bot to crawl your site for the Internet Archive.

They even archive linked files and images. So, you could post your old mailboxes. Encrypt them, if needed. By the time future archeologists find it, it should be easily crackable, if legal.

Re:File formats are the core problem

[shimmin]

And even if the media is stable for centuries, how will they know how to read it? This is a problem over even just 20 years.

I have an old 7-inch floppy with some TI software old it. I'm sure it's bit-rotted to oblivion by now, but even if it hadn't, I don't have the media reader to read it. And even if I did, I still don't know how the disk was formatted. Was it for CP/M, an early MS-DOS, what?

On encountering digital data, future archaeologists will have to (1) research past media recording technologies enough to build a reader (2) research (poorly documented) data formatting protocols so they can (3) write themselves a device driver and (4) read the media.

I pity the archaeologist who first has to rediscover EBCDIC.

IBM has the solution

[protoshoggoth]

How soon we forget. As discussed a short while ago, IBM's new storage format could be a step toward more permanent storage, at least compared to the physical deterioration of magnetic and optical media: IBM 's Hyperpunchcards

Re:Dark ages?

[lamz]

Well, it's a new definition for "dark ages", that's for sure.
I was under the impression that the defining characteristics of the dark ages was ignorance, suppression, warfare, famine, strife -- you know, BAD STUFF.

Actually, the period we call the "Dark Ages" is a period for which we have few written records. It's only 'dark' because we can't 'see' what was happening back then.