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Even in a restricted context (the apparent documented information), hard copies have advantages over digital copies under two considerations. First, they survi

Even in a restricted context (the apparent documented information), hard copies have advantages over digital copies under two considerations. First, they survive technological obsolescence. Consider how even reading a floppy disk is a huge pain in the ass for most people today. Now stretch the time frame. (Some might say that all you need to do is copy the contents to a new medium when upgrading. Sure, you can do that, but it has a migration cost, and perhaps some risk. It's not a freebie. Compare that to keeping around hard copies.) Second, they have historically been less ephemeral. Sure, we have durable, write-once media out there that manufacturers claim will last thousands of years (we'll see in...thousands of years), but that's rare. For important stuff, you should a) keep the hard copy, b) make a digital copy, and c) create backups. You have the option of migrating or reinjesting the original source material, at least.

GauntletWizard 3y ago
Hard copies have significant risks themselves - They're vulnerable to misfiling, to mishandling, and perhaps most importantly, destruction - By natural disaster or human hands. A well organized archive can have much more redundancy, including georedundancy, for the same price. Further, it can have massively redundant metadata - Imagine if we had a reasonable checksum of every document in the archives of everyone who was interested - And then in the event the main archive was lost or offline, we could have a verified reconstruction from the archives of people who had copies of the metadata and partial copies of the data. https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973 https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973
crazygringo 3y ago
I think I would challenge both of these points: > First, they survive technological obsolescence. Consider how even reading a floppy disk is a huge pain in the ass for most people today. Most paper hasn't survived technological obsolescence, because it hasn't survived at all. Nobody's keeping anything on floppies, everything's migrated as you say: > but it has a migration cost, and perhaps some risk. It's not a freebie. Nobody saying it's a freebie, but it's a heckuva lot cheaper than running massive physical warehouses and libraries and museums with security guards and fire suppression systems and everything. And no, there's virtually no risk when you're always keeping distributed backup copies. We use checksums and things to prevent data corruption. > Second, they have historically been less ephemeral. Again, no -- hard copies have historically been far more ephemeral. Remember what happened to the Library of Alexandria? Hard copies are susceptible to fire, war, economic disintegration, and so forth. Digital copies can both have plenty of geographically distributed official backups made and maintained, and also be open to personal backups as well if desired. Keeping hard copies around seems like far more expense for zero benefit -- at least for things that don't have sentimental/museum value.
eviks 3y ago
> Sure, you can do that, but it has a migration cost, and perhaps some risk. It's not a freebie. Compare that to keeping around hard copies.) There is a bigger risk with hard copies since they are unique, and storing them is more expensive, so in neither of those points the simple fact that there is a risk and a cost means much, no option is a freebie

GauntletWizard 3y ago

Hard copies have significant risks themselves - They're vulnerable to misfiling, to mishandling, and perhaps most importantly, destruction - By natural disaster or human hands. A well organized archive can have much more redundancy, including georedundancy, for the same price. Further, it can have massively redundant metadata - Imagine if we had a reasonable checksum of every document in the archives of everyone who was interested - And then in the event the main archive was lost or offline, we could have a verified reconstruction from the archives of people who had copies of the metadata and partial copies of the data. https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973 https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973

crazygringo 3y ago

I think I would challenge both of these points: > First, they survive technological obsolescence. Consider how even reading a floppy disk is a huge pain in the ass for most people today. Most paper hasn't survived technological obsolescence, because it hasn't survived at all. Nobody's keeping anything on floppies, everything's migrated as you say: > but it has a migration cost, and perhaps some risk. It's not a freebie. Nobody saying it's a freebie, but it's a heckuva lot cheaper than running massive physical warehouses and libraries and museums with security guards and fire suppression systems and everything. And no, there's virtually no risk when you're always keeping distributed backup copies. We use checksums and things to prevent data corruption. > Second, they have historically been less ephemeral. Again, no -- hard copies have historically been far more ephemeral. Remember what happened to the Library of Alexandria? Hard copies are susceptible to fire, war, economic disintegration, and so forth. Digital copies can both have plenty of geographically distributed official backups made and maintained, and also be open to personal backups as well if desired. Keeping hard copies around seems like far more expense for zero benefit -- at least for things that don't have sentimental/museum value.

eviks 3y ago

> Sure, you can do that, but it has a migration cost, and perhaps some risk. It's not a freebie. Compare that to keeping around hard copies.) There is a bigger risk with hard copies since they are unique, and storing them is more expensive, so in neither of those points the simple fact that there is a risk and a cost means much, no option is a freebie