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Preserving digital data requires constant maintenance, because none of the media we use will last forever. Any maintenance gap of a few decades means the data i
by wcoenen 3y ago
Preserving digital data requires constant maintenance, because none of the media we use will last forever. Any maintenance gap of a few decades means the data is lost. Such gaps are inevitable over longer timescales like thousands of years.
- xvector 3y agoComputers from the 70s still work fine today, and technology is more resilient, not less. All of Wikipedia (and relevant human histories and discoveries) can fit on a small USB drive.
- asdff 3y agoJust because something lasts 50 years doesn't say anything about 2000
- kouru225 3y agoPreserving analog data also requires maintenance, except digital maintenance is much easier to do and can be, at least partially, automated, while analog maintenance is specialty work that can’t be automated at all.
- asdff 3y agoDigital data still requires hardware that needs maintenance. Besides what is going to be archived over time will be things people consider significant in some way, not joe shmoes harddrive.
- kouru225 3y agoWhat I was pointing out was that you can actually see the fact that the hard drives are designed to be replaced as a positive rather than a negative. It means that the data can be moved from drive to drive without much hassle.
- fomine3 3y agoAnalog: Some media remain without maintenance but harder to copy Digital: No media remain without maintenance but easy to copy, but also we don't copy (except Archivists)
- Wytwwww 3y ago> Preserving digital data requires constant maintenance, because none of the media we use will last forever That's the only reason we have any texts written by Greek and Romans constant maintenance and copying, and that's also why almost everything has been lost over the ages. Clay tablets from the bronze age are an aberration.