[ARSCLIST] 100 years--was: Hard disk drives and DAT

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Spencer" <js@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Well, Richard, my answer was in my earlier post - "migrate, migrate,  
> migrate". I don't subscribe to 100-year life expectancies any more  
> once files are digital.
> 
The reality is the we (or our descendants) will see one of two scenarii
in 2107:

1) Technology will have continued to advance at its near-exponential
rate; this will make it possible to store quantities of information
we can't believe, using methods we can't imagine (which still won't
be adequate, since more information will also be created...)!

2) Someone, somewhere, will have pushed the "big red button;" the
resulting global or galactic wars will have left the planet as a
radioactive cinder, inhabited only by mutant cockroaches which
glow in the dark.

Either way, anything we preserve now may be as viable as all the
typewritten or handwritten documents which were intended to store
information more or less forever in 1907!

There is, oddly enough, one exception. That is analog recordings
pressed using shellac-based compounds. I have 78's recorded in, or
before, 1907...which I can still play today, probably as well as I
ever could have!

Steven C. Barr