The way desktop content is consumed hasn't changed much in 20 years though. Ok we now have OOXML instead of DOC but the layout of the content and even editors t

The way desktop content is consumed hasn't changed much in 20 years though. Ok we now have OOXML instead of DOC but the layout of the content and even editors to some extent hasn't changed much. This is why PDFs still open. GIFs, BMPs, JPEGs, etc still work fine etc. Granted there will be a problem with older and/or more esoteric proprietary formats but that's a risk people should weigh up when using less common software and saving files from them. In my opinion the biggest short term threat we have at the moment isn't the popular document file formats (though that is a long term threat) but content posted exclusively online. Web standards are constantly evolving and any given website would have a multitude of files -- many of which wouldn't even be hosted on the same domain as the HTML endpoint, which itself is most likely dynamically generated. Plus our local copies of web content is just a temporary cache that routinely gets flushed so once it disappears from the web it's likely gone for good (web archive aside). I'll be more worried about classic file formats when computing undergoes it's next paradigm shift away from personal computing (arguably that's already started happening with smart phones and cloud computing).