You may wish to check out
http://www.longnow.org/
-Mike
On Fri, 2 Jun 2000, Clint Wolff (VAX collector) wrote:
>
> 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 - 18:24:53 BST