OT: Archiving data/video/movies/photos/oral history

From: Clint Wolff <vaxman_at_uswest.net>
Date: Fri Jun 2 17:59:50 2000

A point to ponder:

Have you ever wondered why languages 'disappear'? For example Egyptian
hieroglyphs. Until the discovery of the Rosetta stone, they were just
undecipherable pictures on the walls of graves.

I fear the same problem is rapidly arriving with regards to computerized
documentation.

How many (normal) people have access to 9-track tapes, eight inch
floppies, or even 5.25 inch floppies. All records that are
stored in these formats are effectively lost to them.

In 100 years is anyone going to even recognize a 9-track tape? Or
paper tape? Or possibly even floppy diskettes?

If an archeolgist digs up a CD-ROM in 500 years, how are they
possibly going to decode the information stored on it. It is scrambled,
encoded, ECCed, and stirred some more. Is it read from ID to OD (yes),
or from OD to ID. Are they going to know what Red book, Yellow book,
ISO 9660, or Joliet mean? Will they even understand English (or a
close enough descendant)? Most Americans barely understand English
(Kings English) as it was spoken 400 years ago (Shakespeare,
Chaucer, etc).

The point is, any form of long term archival must include enough
information to allow an intelligent ignorant person to decode the
archive. This information must be recorded in a fashion that doesn't
degrade with time, and can be interpreted in the future.

clint
Received on Fri Jun 02 2000 - 17:59:50 BST