Scientists warn we may be creating a 'digital dark age'

[waves]

You may think that those photos on Facebook or all your tweets may last forever, or might even come back to haunt you, depending on what you have out there. But, in reality, much of our digital information is at risk of disappearing in the future.

Unlike in previous decades, no physical record exists these days for much of the digital material we own. Your old CDs, for example, will not last more than a couple of decades. This worries archivists and archaeologists and presents a knotty technological challenge.

“We may [one day] know less about the early 21st century than we do about the early 20th century,” says Rick West, who manages data at Google. “The early 20th century is still largely based on things like paper and film formats that are still accessible to a large extent; whereas, much of what we're doing now — the things we're putting into the cloud, our digital content — is born digital. It's not something that we translated from an analog container into a digital container, but, in fact, it is born, and now increasingly dies, as digital content, without any kind of analog counterpart.”

Computer and data specialists refer to this era of lost data as the "digital dark ages." Other experts call the 21st century an “informational black hole,” because the digital information we are creating right now may not be readable by machines and software programs of the future. All that data, they worry — our century’s digital history — is at risk of never being recoverable.

Scientists warn we may be creating a 'digital dark age'

 

[Nithavela]

Cool, this might be our chance of future generations not laughing about us..

 

[majj27]

*rushes to print off hardcopies of my college-years poetry*

*stops to consider*

*goes back to couch and relaxes instead*

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

Definitely food for thought. I think I have lost an innumerate amount of teaching resources because they were on floppy disks and are incompatible with my current laptop.

My first's child's baby paper photo album may survive but MC's baby movie clips and digital photos will not exist.

 

[FireDragon76]

In the recent past I got into digital photography to try to sell some of my old junk on e-Bay, and my dad gave me his old DSLR camera. So I decided to look into general use cameras for taking pictures since I do not have a smart phone and plan to never get one, if I can avoid it. And it's been an eye-opener how much people have abandoned conventional film, despite the fact digital has alot of unknowns as far as long term storage goes.

 

[Ringo84]

“We may [one day] know less about the early 21st century than we do about the early 20th century,”

Oh dear...what a great loss that will be [/sarcasm]
Ringo

 

[Chesterton]

Cool, this might be our chance of future generations not laughing about us..

Sorry. I print out all of your posts to ensure that future generations can and will laugh at Nithavela as much as I do.

 

[Larniavc]

Thank goodness for that. At some point in the far, far future I can stop worrying about my search history getting out.

 

[citizenthom]

Definitely food for thought. I think I have lost an innumerate amount of teaching resources because they were on floppy disks and are incompatible with my current laptop.

You're welcome.

https://www.amazon.com/External-Flo...d=1515353595&sr=8-3&keywords=usb+floppy+drive

 

[CitizenD]

Scientists warn we may be creating a 'digital dark age'

I am a software professional and amateur photographer.

I am absolutely convinced that 10 years from now the average person will have extreme difficulty digging up cherished photos. I've already seen it myself among my early adopter friends and family. As a result I have gone to great pains to index my photos, but to this day I believe the best way to make photos accessible is to print them.