Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
Yet.So called "permanent" digital archives just don't exist.
Look, I have been (and am) as skeptical of technology as anyone. I think anyone who makes his living from technology tends to be. Heck, I still print all my scores for storage (on high-quality laser paper). The thing is, I've begun to "get" the digital information revolution.
In a few years there will be
1. Petabyte (a million GB) drives on your desktop. These will be capable of storing all recorded human knowledge.
2. Affordable book readers that actually are superior to books. I ain't talking about the nearly useless tablet devices we have today. I'm talking about a device that displays information with the resolution of print and the thinkness and weight of paper. Such a device might conceivably display 50 to 100 pages at once (allowing you to leaf through them), yet weigh no more than an ordinary book. This technology already exists in labs.
Given these two developments, and some updating of the legal system to accommodate them, storing vast amounts of data permanently is both feasible and makes financial sense. I imagine that anyone could store files there. Possibly http://www.archive.org is one of the early steps towards this.
At some point the whole updating issue becomes moot. The entire archival issue becomes essentially a matter of software (with an ops center to support it on the hardware side). And PDF will be there, no matter what happens to Adobe. It's already too universal. At the very least there will be simple, reliable conversions to the latest and greatest thing.
If civilization collapses, then the next civilization will just have to figure it out. I refuse to worry about that.
--
Robert Patterson
http://RobertGPatterson.com
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