[LINK] Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge

[Kim Holburn]

On 2010/Apr/07, at 10:16 PM, Brendan Scott wrote:

> On 04/06/2010 10:58 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:
>> I found an article in New Scientist (30 Jan 2010) on a subject we  
>> have
>> discussed before here.  How long our mounting cloud of digital data
>> will last.  Compared with say Babylonian cuniform tablets from 3500
>> years ago the answer is not long.   They have a chart:
>> Flash memory: 10 Years
>> Magnetic tape: about 20 years
>> Rewritable CDs and DVDs: 7 years
>> Most CD-R and DVD+R, DVD-R, audio CD and Movie DVDs: 26 years
>> Special gold CD-R: 100 years
>> Hard disks: no-one knows.
>>
>> And that's assuming we have the ability to read them then.  Reading
>> media made in old drives is not necessarily easy at all.  Less easy  
>> if
>> the drives are not available even less easy if no engineers familiar
>> with them are still alive.  Maybe our digital society is just
>> evanescent.
>>
>> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527451.300-digital-doomsday-the-end-of-knowledge.html
>
> What this doesn't take account of is that a hard disk is somewhat  
> more reproducible than a cuneiform tablet. That the medium does not  
> survive is different from the massage not surviving.

Huh?  My seven year old daughter might be able to reproduce a  
cuneiform tablet by pressing it into playdough and making a copy.   I,  
on the other hand, have a hard disk here that has given up the ghost,  
after maybe 2 years of working.  You are welcome to try and reproduce  
any scrap of information in it.


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
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