As we talk about archiving digital media and data forever; this is a salutary reminder of the risk of going digital; technology changes so fast that we risk loosing today’s cultural heritage.
The original Domesday book is over 900 years old and is still readable today in it’s original format; it is unlikely that the information we record today will still be readable in it’s original format in 900 years time and for it to be preserved for future generations, it will have to be migrated on a regular basis to new formats and media.
And as we create more and more data, this migration effort is going to become a major challenge. Does this matter, do we need to store only that which is important and let most of the data we create simply become a data midden? Simply discarded and forgotten? Only to be discovered and pawed over by future generations of digital archaeologists?
This would be fine but we are not talking about data which is hundreds of generations old; we are talking about data created now, in living memory which is potentially ending up the midden.
It is ironic that the technology which has allowed many of us to trace our family trees many generations by allowing easier access to the analogue record by digitising it, could be a major factor in preventing future generations in doing the same.
