I believe at the least the current "dark age" would be more lack of knowledge of the current times due to the fragility of digital media. Most physical forms o

I believe at the least the current "dark age" would be more lack of knowledge of the current times due to the fragility of digital media. Most physical forms of history are destroyed, eroded or buried over time, but can last hundreds or thousands of years sometimes. Digital media perhaps can last the same hopefully, but its shelf life while still in use is much lower. A book from 100 years ago can still be in good condition and perfectly legible. Early era CDs that are now 20y old are starting to fail. The average spinning disk hard drive in use lasts roughly 6 years. Our longest form of digital storage, tape, only lasts up to 30 years. If we want our knowledge to be available to future generations and not just for our own backups, we need faster and longer lived storage. But we won't see everything ported onto it either, so history will probably have a gap of data from the 1990s to the 20XX.