This past weekend at Podcamp Montreal I attended a presentation by Adele McAlear on protecting one’s digital legacy. It was a great presentation, and we also had a great discussion during the session, and it really got me thinking again about the fragility of our media.
I stated that is ironic I have century-old photos of relatives that are in good condition, and CD-ROMS I burnt in 1997 that can no longer be read reliably.
In museums around the world we have ancient clay tablets, scrolls, ancient codex’s, ancient fine art. Much of the material from these ancient times was lost, but some survived, and properly cared for should last indefinitely.
Contrast this with the present day methods of storage: CD’s and DVD’s of suspect longevity, video and audio tape flaking oxide, hard drives (often as not with no back-ups), old data tapes and obsolete diskettes/cartridges, and cloud storage that be a company shut-down or an electromagnetic pulse away from oblivion. Many of the old films of the early 20th century on cellulose nitrate have decomposed, and for many others no quality prints, let along negatives survive. Many of the publications of the 20th century were printed on acid-filled cheap paper stock, and are deteriorating rapidly.
Maybe we should be looking for data storage methods that focus on archival permanence rather than technical trendiness. If you have text you cannot afford to lose, print it out on high quality paper. For audio/video I’m not sure what the long term solution would be, we can’t all have analog disk cutters in our homes.
In the far future, the 20th and 21st century could be know as the Age of Ephemera, if little of our present day content survives.
Clay tablets, anyone?
