Okay, if you haven't picked up on this before, I'm an old fart. Not eligible for AARP yet (gotta be 50), but still pretty damn old. Like, I remember punch cards, DECtape, 8" floppies (back when they really were floppy), and monster magtapes. In other words, I've seen just a few digital formats in my computer lifetime.

Given that, I was interested to read this piece from MIT's Technology Review on the Myth of Doomed Data, whose sub-title reads "The handwringing about obsolete formats is misguided. The digital files we create today will be around for a very, very long time."

If this isn't one of the most interesting questions about society and technology, I don't know what is. When you realize that we can still look at found documents that are hundreds (or thousands) of years old, it is a bit disconcerting to wonder what generations in the distant future may make of some of our digital artifacts, when we're lucky to convert an 8-track if we want.

Thanks to mgk for the pointer. BTW, he writes:

Ive said it before and Ill say it again: digital preservation represents a significant technical challenge, but its first and foremost a social challenge.

Now there's something I'd like to see more about!

07:12 PM | linkme | home