Vint Cerf: Data That's Here Today May Be Gone Tomorrow

dcblogs writes "Vinton Cerf is warning that digital things created today — spreadsheets, documents, presentations as well as mountains of scientific data — may not be readable in the years and centuries ahead. Cerf illustrates the problem in a simple way. He runs Microsoft Office 2011 on Macintosh, but it cannot read a 1997 PowerPoint file. 'It doesn't know what it is,' he said. 'I'm not blaming Microsoft,' said Cerf, who is Google's vice president and chief Internet evangelist. 'What I'm saying is that backward compatibility is very hard to preserve over very long periods of time.' He calls it a 'hard problem.'" We're at an interesting spot right now, where we're worried that the internet won't remember everything, and also that it won't forget anything.

Comments

DRM and the digital black hole

[Neo-Rio-101]

A perfect example of this is basically the issue of old video games. (I may as well bring this up because it's going to come up)

Recently, the Internet Archive stored a whole pile of TOSEC collections of games from various old systems (thanks to their DCMA exemption of being an archival repository so that they can legally do this). Data and information that would have otherwise been completely lost into a digital black hole, if it weren't for the fans of the system, and the dedicated teams of people collecting and amassing this software as a hobby.... in breach of copyright.

The problem with DRM is that without dedicated crackers and pirates, unless the original rights holders are around long enough to resell old titles for that long (which most aren't), old games will simply disappear into a digital copyright black hole and never be seen again. This happens once the computer/console system system is old, not sold anymore, and forgotten about, and the media degrades and isn't backed up in some form (in breach of EULA). If people aren't able to collect the software and hang on to it, preserving/duplicating the media while still in copyright, it's going to vanish. Culturally important games of significance will be lost forever, and that, if anything is as much a crime as it is to pirate software in the first place.
It's only due to the efforts of an army of swappers/crackers, etc, that most of the old games on old systems were even preserved.

The steam model on PC is quite good though as it makes a few compromises where you can actually make backups and go offline if you want.
For old computers and consoles however, this doesn't apply,.... and with some more restrictive attempts to squash the used game market, and force internet-always-connected authentication on upcoming consoles to even play the game... one has to wonder if the game companies deliberately want to squish all traces of their old work, let it disappear into the ether, and to resell you this year's football game which is just like last year's. I fear that this is where we are headed (if we aren't there already)

Re:DRM and the digital black hole

[jeffasselin]

What about online-only games? Will historians in 100 years be able to play WoW and see what the game was like?

No different than cars

[HockeyPuck]

We're still able to restore cars from the 80s and earlier as the cars were fully mechanical or hydraulic. No computers.

Fast forward to 20yrs from now, nobody's going to be carrying the computer boards for a 2004 Toyota Pruis or a 2013 Tesla.

However, you'll still be able to restore your grandfather's '57 Chevy...

Code should accompany data

[michaelmalak]

I presented a solution to this long-standing problem last year to the Denver HTML5 Meetup.

Code should never be separated from data. This is possible with HTML5, JavaScript, and open source.

In the presentation, I steal and repurpose Hofstadter's analogy of DNA to an LP vinyl record, which is an information bearer, but useless without its information retriever (the record player). Like the cell of an animal, which contains both DNA and the means to "play" it, I ask why not the same with software?

My maxim is: data should always carry the code with it to play itself. It was inspired from the field I've spent 50% of my career in: non-destructive testing where, for example, X-Rays and ultrasounds are performed on safety-critical industrial parts with 50-year service lives. If one of those parts fails and kills someone, you're going to want to go back into the old data and find the earliest indication of the flaw or fault and reinspect every other part in the world like it that is still in service. And maybe you need to go back 50 years. Under such a context, not providing the code with the data could be considered an act of gross neglect.

In my presentation, I use the 1990's era trick of embedding XSL into an XML file, with the addition of the XSL now being able to use HTML5/JavaScript. Sadly, I've only gotten it work with Firefox -- the other browsers consider it a security violation.

Re:emulation / virtualization

[smash]

err... plus DosBox is running x86 software I have from 198x...which is 30+ years now.