Interesting article by Ted Rall and it doesn't even involve politics.
Because all digitally stored information deteriorates with time, he
suggests that perhaps we should take a giant leap backwards and start
storing important information on paper. Or perhaps stone tablets?
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A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH
By UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE/TED RALLTue Aug 23, 8:06 PM ET
Cultural Suicide via Digitalization
NEW YORK--Compact discs won't skip. They'll play even if you scratch
them. Unless you break them or set them on fire, they'll last forever.
That's the sales pitch the recording industry used to convince America
to switch from vinyl records to CDs. But, as anyone who owns a hairy dog
or cat knows, CDs do skip. And as anyone who uses them to store computer
files knows, digital data stored on them eventually vanishes in a
mysterious phenomenon called "data rot." "With proper care this Compact
Disc will last a lifetime," promised the packaging on the first digital
recordings. Now experts wonder whether they'll make it 20 years.
Without discussion or debate humanity has committed itself to the
wholesale digitalization of its collective cultural and historical
information base. Music, movies, manuscripts, everything from letters
between presidents to merchants' financial transactions are currently
created and stored in strictly digital form--a development that fulfills
George Orwell's prophecy that history would become mutable, now with a
few keystrokes. Even more terrifying than the likelihood that the
digitalization of history will be abused in the service of tyranny is
the certainty that we are setting the stage for the greatest loss of
knowledge since the destruction of the Royal Library at Alexandria.
Data is created in a bewildering variety of programs, even within the
same type of application (say, word processing). Few are
interchangeable, differing operating systems conflict within the same
program, and they go out of date with alarming speed. Files created in
WordPerfect, until fairly recently the nation's dominant word processing
program, are quickly becoming as irretrievable as ragtime songs recorded
on brown wax phonograph cylinders. It is conceivable that a few
librarians will keep around some antique Wangs and Commodore 64s in
order to access digital archives. And a tiny proportion of data will be
transferred and adapted to successor formats. But for most computer
users, data created on obsolete software and hardware might as well have
never existed.
There are two kinds of digital data storage media: magnetic and optical.
Zip and Jaz discs, heirs to the floppies of the '90s, get corrupted from
"magnetic particle instability," "tape lubricant loss,"
"self-demagnetization," and exposure to electromagnetic devices (like
computers and other electronic gadgets). Once you hear what Zip disc
users call the "click of death," it's over. Digital data works on the
pass/fail basis: it's either all available or it's all gone.
Recordable CDs and DVDs have mostly replaced magnetic storage devices.
But those go bad too. CDs and DVDs, explains USA Today tech writer
Andrew Cantor, "have two layers encased in clear plastic: a reflective
layer and a transparent dye layer. When you 'burn' a disc, your CD or
DVD writer fires a laser at that dye to create dark spots that don't let
the reflective coating shine through. Your computer reads the dark and
reflective spots as the ones and zeros of your data. But some dyes are
better than others. After a while those burned-in opaque spots start to
get less opaque. The disc fails."
It is impossible to fathom how much of our cultural patrimony has been
lost to the failings of analog storage devices. Paper burns, film
disintegrates, canvas molders. But there are two crucial differences
between these pre-digital formats and what we're leaving future
generations of historians. First, analog isn't pass/fail. You can see,
and possibly restore, a stained or faded photograph. Moreover, while the
majority of books printed 400 years ago have been destroyed, a few
remain. Those survivors provide a tantalizing glimpse into the larger
lost history. Had they been stored digitally, however, the loss would
have been total: Every word of every last one would have succumbed to
data rot.
Is there an alternative? Cantor says yes: "For long-term storage of
documents, you can't beat paper."
This is an issue like global warming, one with such devastating
implications and calling for such Herculean solutions that most people
would rather not think about it. And like global warming, it's a problem
that we simply have to solve.
Our ancestors left us records describing how they lived, starting with
the clay tablets of hieroglyphs that ancient Sumerians used as sales
receipts on up through FDR's personal letters to Churchill (typed on
paper, with several carbon copies for redundant storage in scattered
government warehouses). We owe the same to those whose past is our
present. Government and business must lead the way. Unless we start
backing up and storing everything of importance on more reliable media
like paper and photographic film, however, we will betray that
obligation. Our songs, our stories, our controversies, the rich tapestry
of life at this particular place at this particular time will all be
lost. We'll be dead; worse than that, it will be as if we had never
existed.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20050824/cm_ucru/afateworsethandeath;_ylt=Ah
rBoVyVGPvWzzOSaaRZCj_9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
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