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Researcher Warns of "Digital Dark Age"

Posted by Soulskill on from the evaporating-digital-culture dept.

alphadogg writes "A assistant professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is sounding a warning that companies, the government and researchers need to come up with a plan for preserving our increasingly digitized data in light of shifting document management and other software platforms (think WordPerfect and floppy disks). Jerome P. McDonough, who teaches at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says there exists about 369 exabytes worth of data, and that includes some pretty hard to replace stuff, including tax files, email and photos. Open standards could play a key role in any preservation effort, he says. 'If we can't keep today's information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture,' McDonough said. Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date.'"

4 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. it's a problem but... by rastoboy29 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'm more concerned about the freedom of the wires than preservation of data at this point.

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    expandfairuse.org
  2. Even better by chebucto · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Just mandate that all physical media has to contain an extra partition with schematics of a drive to read the media (the schematics themselves can be saved as a .DWG). Likewise, mandate that all file contain a binary blob which defines the file format's specifications. That way all media and all files have within them the key to read them.

    Problem solved!

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    The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
  3. What is a good industrial document management by mrmeval · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    ...industrial document management system that is GNU or BSD?

    I have binary only test programs for a PLC, I have test procedures, I have C source code, I have binaries, I have customer manuals and I need to manage them better.

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    I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
  4. WITCHCRAFT! Re:FIRST FUCKIN POST by infonography · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    He consorted with the Devil so he could make that posts.

    Confess sinner or be condemned to eternal Dial-up speeds.

    oh, and I hear he weights as much as a Duck.

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    Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23