I don't think the lack of optical or hard disk storage started the hole in history. Rather, perhaps IBM did when it invented the hard drive in the 1950s. Or may

I don't think the lack of optical or hard disk storage started the hole in history. Rather, perhaps IBM did when it invented the hard drive in the 1950s. Or maybe it was as early as Edison's phonograph in the 1870s. Whenever artifacts started requiring technology to interpret them (external dependencies, if you will) is when this hole in human history really began. Perhaps future generations will see the digital revolution as a time of strictly furthering the bottom-line; a time when it became prohibitively expensive to print most data. Yet currently, we call this "being green." How will future generations perceive this period in history?