Technology

Great article! This kind of thing fascinates me. I've thought about this topic quite a lot over the past decade or two. Mostly in the context of my own personal digital data and the stuff created by people I love and care about. But also on a wider level.

I've been backing up what I consider my most important stuff (including writing, audio, and art work) on to MDISCs for several years. Each disc is supposed to last around 10,000 years. But realistically because of the organic elements in the disc they 'only' last for about 1,000 years.

That should be fine from a longevity perspective (assuming the discs themselves don't get destroyed, obviously). But there's still the question of whether future generations would have the ability to extract that data, even if it's still there on physical media. Would they have the devices and the know-how to read and parse them back into a useable format?

I guess if we hit another dark age then there will probably be more pressing concerns anyway. But it makes me sad to think of all that lost content - not only mine but so many other people who have created interesting stuff. Especially when one realizes that, like the article says, a lot of the early Internet has already been lost. And quite a few of those creators are no longer alive.

To paraphrase Roy Batty: all those creations have been lost, like tears in rain.