4 ms·
this is such a weird article - could the same article be written to say that because VCRs are no longer common household items, decades worth of media recording
by 2bitencryption 5y ago
this is such a weird article - could the same article be written to say that because VCRs are no longer common household items, decades worth of media recordings are lost to history?
From the article:
> That means what was once an interactive explainer of how the planes hit the World Trade Center or a visually-rich story on where some survivors of the attacks are now, at best, a non-functioning still image, or at worst, a gray box informing readers that "Adobe Flash player is no longer supported."
Does CNN really think the best, most interactive way to learn about 9/11 history, for the average person, is to load up the internet archive, and play with some crappy SWF?
Of course, I guess the original SWF experience is an interesting historical document, and I wouldn't be surprised if museums one day have an interactive exhibit where you can use a 2001-era Gateway PC to navigate those "lost" sites, just like they were back then.
But even then, the news coverage is not "lost" to history. If I found a copy of the original Hindenburg newsreel film, I wouldn't call it "lost" just because I don't have the equipment to play it.
- bonzini 5y agoEquipment to play video reels would be pretty easy to reconstruct when given a single reel. Even a VHS would be much harder, and reverse engineering the JPEG specifications would be nigh impossible.
- 7steps2much 5y agoThat is assuming you have to reverse engineer it. While it is true that some proprietary formats will inevitably be lost to time, a lot of open formats could be reconstructed in the future simply by preserving the format specification. Think ogg or mkv for example.