Will your digital info. be available in the future?

[LONDONER]

By "digital information" I mean your documents and photographs stored on the hard drive of your computer.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31450389

Personally it doesn't matter to me since I have no family and when I die, all my digital information will die with me (at least, that's the plan). But what about really important stuff? Today we search archives for historical information, photos and films of historical events but if as now, so much is stored as digital information, what will happen in the future if methods of accessing this becomes obsolete?

[Vizor]

[MENTION=18457]LONDONER[/MENTION]

[Rareboy]

It is something that troubles me greatly.

I already have tons of digital information that is no longer accessible because of hardware failures and so many things like photos and correspondence now only exist on my hard-drives.

For instance, I have a data base of over 90,000 people in my family tree research that no one else in my immediate family would know how to access...and I'm not sure they'd care to until it is too late. Some of my information came from web pages that were created by people who died and then their information vanished.

But to print my own research now requires almost 1000 pages...and it is always changing.

There needs to be a way of saving archives and research for posterity...including the porno.

[meridannight]

why is Google worried about images and documents saved on my computer being lost to the ''digital Dark Age''? lols. mind your own business Google. if i wanted to publicize my private photos and documents for the anonymous public i would have already done so.

i don't understand what he's talking about at all. capturing private individuals' personal information to a cloud by x-ray shots? is he drunk? do i really need to worry about being unable to access my own personal info in year 3000? i don't think so.

he's completely off with this fear of loss of data. important information is always copied and saved to another format if some other format should become more standardized.

[Rareboy]

^ Cerf's point is that we may leave no actual record to compare to the hard record that we base so much of our understanding of the past on.

And this is true. I have boxes and albums of family pictures back to the mid 19th century. They will go into an archive. But already, I have lost about 5000 photos that I took over the last decade because they are on hard-drives that I can no longer access except at great expense. So all these years are now effectively unrecorded outside of the some of the photos I shared that others might still have.

The first time that I realized the danger was looking at my mother's DOS based research on floppy disks. We no longer have the equipment to open them up. So 10 years of her work is effectively wasted unless we find someone who can do this.

Increasingly, the entire record of our civilization is being converted to electronic media. There are almost no personal letters that now exist....many records are now only electronic. It is likely that vast amounts of the information we now use will just simply cease to exist...with no hard copy.

This may be disastrous for civilization even 500 years hence if some means is not preserved to unlock the data on obsolete devices.

[LONDONER]

As I said, it doesn't matter to me personally and it might not matter to you Meridianight, but think of al the important "papers" that might well be lost or become inaccessible; scientific papers, medical research papers etc. as well as all the books written by important authors, fiction and non-fiction. All of these would be a loss to society in general.

[meridannight]

And this is true. I have boxes and albums of family pictures back to the mid 19th century. They will go into an archive. But already, I have lost about 5000 photos that I took over the last decade because they are on hard-drives that I can no longer access except at great expense. So all these years are now effectively unrecorded outside of the some of the photos I shared that others might still have.

The first time that I realized the danger was looking at my mother's DOS based research on floppy disks. We no longer have the equipment to open them up. So 10 years of her work is effectively wasted unless we find someone who can do this.

?? i have an external floppy disk reader that connects to a computer via USB in my drawer. (not that i have any floppy disks).

why can't you access those hard drives?

backtracking always exists. you just have to copy your files to a new medium once the old one is being phased out. still don't get the problem here.

[Borg69]

?? i have an external floppy disk reader that connects to a computer via USB in my drawer. (not that i have any floppy disks).

why can't you access those hard drives?

backtracking always exists. you just have to copy your files to a new medium once the old one is being phased out. still don't get the problem here.

As things are gearing more towards storage on a "cloud" virtually, all data, books, music, movies, science, ... become this ethereal thing that doesn't exist in a "hard copy" anywhere. Someday a solar flare or EMP, or super virus... could strike leaving the mass of the planet's knowledge wiped out and inaccessible putting us all back into the dark ages.

If it weren't for stone carvings, clay tablets, and a very few papyrus scrolls, and cave paintings that managed to survive the eons we wouldn't know anything about our ancient history. We have nothing like that to preserve our vast knowledge to pass on.

[Rareboy]

?? i have an external floppy disk reader that connects to a computer via USB in my drawer. (not that i have any floppy disks).

why can't you access those hard drives?

backtracking always exists. you just have to copy your files to a new medium once the old one is being phased out. still don't get the problem here.

We have had two server failures that have resulted in the loss of files. The quotes to retrieve the information on the damaged equipment is about $3500 - $7500.

The idea of just transferring all the old files to the new equipment when you change hardware and systems is good....but if the hardware fails before you upgrade, then you have to assess whether the information is worth paying for in order to have someone retrieve.

I should also clarify that when I am talking about floppies, I am talking about the 5 inch floppies....and I haven't had that tech available to me for about 20 years or so.

[meridannight]

As things are gearing more towards storage on a "cloud" virtually, all data, books, music, movies, science, ... become this ethereal thing that doesn't exist in a "hard copy" anywhere. Someday a solar flare or EMP, or super virus... could strike leaving the mass of the planet's knowledge wiped out and inaccessible putting us all back into the dark ages.

If it weren't for stone carvings, clay tablets, and a very few papyrus scrolls, and cave paintings that managed to survive the eons we wouldn't know anything about our ancient history. We have nothing like that to preserve our vast knowledge to pass on.

ok. this i understand. why didn't they explain it that way though? Cerf doesn't talk about EMPs or solar flares (which actually would make sense). he talks about some imaginary digital revolution that would mysteriously skip the fact that if such a thing would occur there would be a smooth transition to it, enabling everyone to back up their data in the process.

and paper and ink still exists. libraries are still extant. there's a very simple solution to all this -- to make hard copies of all the important information on paper.

science? most of the scientific information is printed out in books. in my library i have books on neuroscience, planetary climate, cosmology, history, pharmacology, chemistry, molecular biology, etc. i am still buying the latest editions in actual books printed on paper and will continue to do so. how is that gonna go extinct? we have not gone exclusively digital and it would be stupid to do so. only private individuals and fleeting information is stored in a cloud. i store nothing in a cloud.

books won't disappear. music is still on CDs. films are on DVDs. (not to mention older films are actually on 35mm film, which has its own storage concerns but that's beyond this topic right now). and you can't wipe those out because the digital information on CDs and DVDs is physically represented in the medium in the form of pits or indentations. all my essential information is backed up on DVDs.

there is no problem here. any future technology that would yield current technology obsolete won't do so overnight. it will be a transition and it would include capacity to convert information from one format to another. and of course we should never fully rely on digital storage. actual physical backup on paper is basic common sense.