Vint Cerf Warns Against 'Digital Dark Age'

An anonymous reader writes: Vint Cerf, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said we need better methods for preserving everything we do on computers. It's not just about finding better storage media — it's about recording all the aspects of modern software and operating systems so future generations can figure out how it all worked. Cerf says, "The solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the content and the application and the operating system together, with a description of the machine that it runs on, and preserve that for long periods of time. And that digital snapshot will recreate the past in the future." Cerf is also pushing for better data preservation standards: "The key here is when you move those bits from one place to another, that you still know how to unpack them to correctly interpret the different parts. That is all achievable if we standardize the descriptions."

Comments

That is what VM's are for

[Anonymous Coward]

just put the system in a VM image, save it, and there you go. Problem solved.

Re:Not everything is worth saving

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume human eyeballs are required. It's a race between processor efficiency and algorithms vs. the rate at which meaningless crap poisons the well. My goal as an Anonymous Coward is to ensure that future historians have a job to do when the rest of them have been automated away. Signal to noise ratio is my purpose. I am sent here by God with a mission to featherbed future generations by creating a need for snow-shovel-operators to sift through my excrement. ;) Hugs and kisses bitches.

Re:Already happened to a good portion of the early

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the original web is gone, whats left is crowded out by seo bs. And I'd rather not have and ad company decide what part of the web is relevant to me.

Luckily I saved it to a floppy.

Re:Not everything is worth saving

[Greyfox]

Yeah! 200 years from now, all the music of today will be considered classical and be played on future-NPR with the same pretentious tones they play Mozart in today. "That was Dr. Dre's 'All My Bitches' in D-Minor. After the break we'll be playing 'Smell Yo Dick' and 'What What, In The Butt?'"