4 ms·
Imagine how much of our own digital culture which uses a much less durable medium is already lost.
by marcodiego 4y ago
Imagine how much of our own digital culture which uses a much less durable medium is already lost.
- Ekaros 4y agoOr unreadable. Due to changing formats both physical and digital. Not to forget later various copy protections and DRMs...
- jacobr1 4y agoThat doesn't seem true _yet_. I agree it very much is a risk we should be guarding against ... but are there really formats out there for which converters aren't known? It seems like any popular legacy format has a plethora of open-source mechanisms to get at the data (even for DRM) and even hardware might have reversed-engineered specs, or at least old machines being sold on e-bay (though we need to be concerned that won't be the case in a few decades).
- Ekaros 4y agoRecently it has gotten better. But my understanding that for somethings from 70s and 80s it is real issue. Converters can be made, but there is still pretty rare formats. From various floppies to more exotic tapes and such.