> That's because digital storage didn't exist then... Now it's easier and cheaper to store media than ever before It may seem that way, but it's not as simple.

> That's because digital storage didn't exist then... Now it's easier and cheaper to store media than ever before It may seem that way, but it's not as simple. A digitized history project in the UK made this assumption, and later worked really hard to get back at the data, [0] is a long description, the Wikipedia entry on the BBC Domesday book doesn't go into all the details. You might believe we've learned a lesson since then, but I don't. DRM formats are creeping into everything. Right now it seems JPEGs will be usable forever, and that may be; But cultural artificats - games and videos - are already becoming hard to preserve; People only care about convenience, and I suspect a popular 3D-or-lightfield-or-something-format in the future will be similarly hard to preserve 20 years later. Print media has two main advantages: It requires no equipment/software/license/electricity to use; and treated properly, it has been shown to last hundreds of years. I have a couple of 20-year-old hard drives that are still mostly readable (12 bad sectors so far), and that's considered a miracle. Usenet history is disappearing, even though it doesn't take a lot of space - because it isn't in anyone's economic interest to keep it - and the same will happen to free cloud storage sooner or later. [0] http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/tna/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/tna/