Storing digital information for a very long time

[Toddy]

It's a constant, "What is ...?" but in archaeology the interpretation, the overall picture of the site, within it's landscape, both physical and social, is usually more relevant than individual items.
Those items, the artefacts that are found in secure context, are the crucial to the interpretation. Once they are excavated and recorded, then other folks, perhaps specialists in agriculture to follow your example, may be brought in to give their opinion. It's funny how amorphous bits of work worn timbers turn out to be something important.

This is why there can be such conflict with metal detectorists; they preferentially remove metal items from context without recording them in a way that can be used by anyone investigating the site.
Good detectorists know what they're looking at, they generally understand the site/ landscape at least as well as many archaeologists, but those folks are I have to say, very much in the minority still.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[gregorach]

Of course this presumes a continuity of civilization where better and more long lived storage systems are brought into being, a hundred years from now Apple OS 10.4.11 will be a thing of the past, however in much the same way that I can play my Commodore 64 games and read diary entries written on my Apple Newton via emulation it isn't a big leap to assume that I or someone will still be able to read stuff written on my Macbook today via perhaps several layers of emulation running on whatever system is being used in the future.

Obviously this presumes that I keep updating my backup files to whatever substrate is popular every ten to fifteen years.

Of course if civilization is 'interrupted' by a huge rock falling on our heads or similar then fired clay bricks may be the way to go

There are plenty of things way short of that sort of thing which can cause problems. How many people do you reckon still know how to read an 80-column punch card? What do you reckon that number will be in, say, 5 generations time? How about Ada Lovelace's original programs for Babbage's Difference Engine? (And these are both cases where we still understand the underlying technology, and indeed still have the original blueprints.) Lots of stuff just never makes it onto whatever media is fashionable at the moment. For example, we will never know how much Welsh poetry and storytelling never got written down. I've lost track of the amount of data I've lost track of over the years, and that's less than half a single human lifetime. A blink of an eye, if that...

Aren't we overlooking the point that as (relative) oldies, we look to store data on a physical device we keep with us; kids treat the Internet as their storage.

The Internet is just another artefact. I don't expect it to survive nearly as well as Stonehenge - we don't have much of a clue as to what that was really built for, and that was only 5000 years ago. Not really a long time in the grand scheme of things, and a mere blip next to the "billion years" mentioned in the OP.

People always think that their civilisation will last. So far, every single one has been wrong. What makes you think we're any different?

 

[sandbender]

"...How many people do you reckon still know how to read an 80-column punch card?..."

One, my sister and thanks to my sheet feed scanner many of her programs and all original notes have been converted to .pdf files, not perfect I know but there is a now more of a chance that these things will be around for her great grandchildren to show no interest in whatsoever.

and a mere blip next to the "billion years" mentioned in the OP

Just to clarify, the "billion years" is a figure the used by the university to describe their new technology, I am not suggesting that humans will be around that far into the future.

 

[HillBill]

i wish i could read my old amiga floppies is all.
some cracking games on there..

I think you can get them all Amiga/atari st etc on the net if you look. All pc compatable

 

[tobes01]

The Internet is just another artefact. I don't expect it to survive nearly as well as Stonehenge - we don't have much of a clue as to what that was really built for, and that was only 5000 years ago. Not really a long time in the grand scheme of things, and a mere blip next to the "billion years" mentioned in the OP.

People always think that their civilisation will last. So far, every single one has been wrong. What makes you think we're any different?

Quite agreed on longevity, there's nothing like a dirty great stack of stones for surviving the ages. What's different with the Internet vs a standalone device is we've created something self-healing that was designed to last come what may. The Internet might get swallowed by something else (just as it swallowed Usenet) but it would take a planetary catastrophe to destroy it in its entirety; sure we might lose access to it at home, or even in a given country, but somewhere it would carry on. The Stonehenge builders clearly set out to make something that would last, whereas the Internet has evolved into a lasting entity, and we haven't properly thought about the implications of that.

One day a future generation of archaeologists will pore over our Internet and wonder how we managed to evolve beyond talking cr*p on Facebook and looking at pictures of Paris Hilton's backside.

 

[Ogri the trog]

All this talk about recording media and format readability just strengthens the arguement for a good old fashioned story time around the campfire, no trouble with recording what words were used, no trouble with interpretation as the story gets repeated and the important points reiterated in different ways by different tellers.
The elders become the holders of information and retake their place as important members of society.

Simple Innit?

Ogri the trog

 

[Toddy]

How many people do you reckon still know how to read an 80-column punch card? quote]

Me, my first real job was in the office of a huge assurance company, and we not only manually punched missing ones but shifted written data across too
Tedium ad nauseaum Amazing how fast you could get though.

Funnily enough it came in useful later when I was researching old silk weaving patterns. Many of the designs for the first mechanisation of the heddles on the jacquard looms were done on cards and I could 'see' the pattern changes and rethread them in order.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[rik_uk3]

Aren't we overlooking the point that as (relative) oldies, we look to store data on a physical device we keep with us; kids treat the Internet as their storage. And the Internet never forgets things that are accessed, so it will continue to store data that is relevant to someone, somewhere. Even if there's a really big bang, there will be copies in a data centre somewhere.

Being of the old git persuasion myself, I use a Drobo RAID drive for my storage, with copies on DVD in the gun cabinet.

As an aside, a colleague had to take a laptop on a (non-bushcraft) camping holiday last year to finish a book he was writing. His kids asked him "what use is a laptop without an Internet connection?" Says it all for the way they see the future...

I've got a little USB internet stick which works really well, I can watch the BBC news from the comfort of my tent, and I could have a vid con with the mountain rescue team if I needed help

I did not touch a computer until 1989/90 but have gone from the humble Amstrad 1640 up to my quad core machine now, storage space is crazy cheap, more room for junk Anyone remember when blank CDs were £20 EACH My first CD writer was £300, the last DVD writer I got was £12; where will it end.

 

[Grooveski]

I think you can get them all Amiga/atari st etc on the net if you look. All pc compatable

Yup, they're all out there. After selling my Amiga I missed Master Blaster so much I've had emulators installed pretty much ever since.
Can only get three players working these days as the emulators don't know what to make of some controllers but three's better than none.

Oh la la!

 

[Kikatito]

i still have my grand parents old Reel to Reel tape machine, the tapes must be 5mm at a guess with out looking........I remember being a kid and playing with it and finding crazy old recordings of people talking etc and some music.........Now i have not used this piece of equipment in at least 20 years but about 7 years ago thru the internet i heard some music thats i reconised by a guy called Hamish Imlach....it totally took me back to these tapes.....

so basically yeah IMO the internet is a good way to share and store info but like all technology it must have a shelf life where it is replaced by a newer and better thing or the internet will just become so big that everything gets lost in the storage due to not being correctly indexed etc......unless like the 80-column punch card's you know how to use them....i know what an punch card is and looks like but thats it!