Digital doomsday

There is a new article on the possible loss of digital information in New Scientist. It naturally focuses on scientific data and seems to strike a good balance between alarm and acceptance. The issues affect us all, but in the end it does seem a bit short-sighted when compared to the incredibly vast amount of information that has already been lost through the centuries (or even decades: interestingly enough, a lot of the information on, say, natural remedies that was commonplace two generations ago is quite obscure these days).

What we need to accept is that civilizations and cultures change and with them there is always a change in priorities, which inevitable implies losses. But the article makes a good point in that the amount of energy needed to keep digital data current is very large. When I hear of efforts to keep our audio heritage digitally alive for generations and generations, I cannot help but be a bit skeptic.

Digital preservation is to analog preservation what a car is to a bicycle: yes, theoretically you can get much farther (without wear), but you need much more energy to get there.