Re: [ARSCLIST] Fw: [ARSCLIST] Gold CDs (some comments on MO, titanium discs, petaboxes, etc.)

[Jon Noring <jon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Karl wrote:
> Peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>> Oh well, a consensus
>> on what archival means when referring to media would be really nice and I'm
>> certainly open to any suggestions on how we all could get such a definition
>> into a published standard.  Any ideas?

> I am reminded of the "Audio preservation: a planning study" published by
> AAA back in 1988. As I recall, the conclusion was that there needs to be a
> mutually agreed upon preservation format that would be supported
> indefinitely, a notion which runs contrary to the fundamental notion of
> "planned obsolescence."
>
> For me, any notion of "archival" would not include any electromagnetic
> storage; a format supported with a technology that is public domain, and
> designed to last as long as stone and able to survive normal fluctuations
> in temperature and humidity. In short, you probably wouldn't want to have
> me on any preservation standards committee.

With regards to digital "media", I've always been intrigued with
magneto-optical storage technology. When the recorded media is kept at
room temperature, it is impervious to magnetic fields. I have heard
the life of data stored on MO disks is currently believed to be over a
century, and possibly much longer (a claim I cannot vouch for, just
heard it.) Is anyone here using MO for digital archival backup?

The Internet Archive, which is pursuing several projects acquiring
huge amounts of digital media (book scans, digitized movies, sound
recordings, etc.), is taking the approach of building a large number
of redundant (kept in different parts of the world and synchronized),
RAIDed disk storage systems (they are working on a 1 petabyte storage
system which can fit inside a standard shipping container.) Even here,
though, it makes sense to also archive the disk contents to some
"permanent" storage media, and magneto-optical storage is certainly
one intriguing candidate.

Ultimately, I think the hopes of ventures such as the Internet Archive
is that new, much more enduring and very high density digital storage
methods will be developed and marketed, such as optical 3-D holographic
methods. Then the idea is to redundantly store the data on both
accessible "hard disk" systems and also on the durable, high density
backup. Migration of the data will periodically be done to assure it
is available/archived on only the latest storage technologies -- to
tackle this issue by redundancy, migration, and a plethora of formats.

(The Church of Scientology, bless its soul, has taken the writings of
L. Ron Hubbard and stored them on titanium discs -- format unknown --
and kept in an underground vault somewhere. The hope is for the
writings to survive the future nuclear holocaust which I think they
believe will occur. This brings up the idea of the most important
content produced by our society to likewise be written to some
extremely durable format and copies kept in various underground
vaults. Of course, the issue is what format should be used -- is it
analog or digital? -- and should the content be accessible to a future
society which does not have the level of technology we now have? For
sound recordings, this may mean producing discs or cylinders (made of
titanium or other truly permanent material) to be played on a "21st
century designed" mechanical/acoustic playback system which can be
stored along with the recorded media. Personally, I believe it
possible to build an acoustic playback system, using modern materials
and computer design, which can have surprisingly good playback
fidelity, maybe even approaching 10 kHz -- an assertion I can't prove,
but interesting to think about. The discs themselves will, of course,
be recorded at high fidelity so if played with a standard
cartridge/stylus system or laser playback, will compare with LP
microgroove technology in sound fidelity.)

Of course, it is imperative to also protect the original media. As noted
by others, this is very costly, and will there be the funds and the
will (not to mention society itself being around) to archive the original
media for the indefinite future?

Just some musings.

Jon Noring