A recent ad wrote, "keep only the best, delete the rest" . I think that
mentality is what is going to cause problems. It is often historically
difficult to determine what is important and what is only eye
candy. Twenty - twenty hindsight is useless without the image.
Gregg
Alasdair wrote:
"John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> I too have deep concerns over the ability to adequately archive digital,
> not just for our direct heirs, but for historical purposes as well.
Digital information has the potential to last forever. Analogue media will
fade or distort with the passage of time, and any attempt to copy them
always introduces distortions and noise. By contrast, a zero and a one can
be copied perfectly.
This is not to say that some digital recording media will not degrade, and
digital data can be lost. But, if you are interested in preserving your
digital information, it is relatively easy to do so.
I think that historians in 200 years time will probably fins that they have
too much source material, not too little. (Then again, they'll have smart
machines to sift through it all for them..)
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