I was writing a book a few years ago that I have long since shelved, all about the longevity of information. The base premise was a mental experiment, what if w

I was writing a book a few years ago that I have long since shelved, all about the longevity of information. The base premise was a mental experiment, what if we don't succeed in over coming some key fundamental issues of society and we end up in a long term energy decline position. How long would it take to go back into a dark age and just how much would we have preserved. Basically about the life time of SSD's (20 years) , CD's (10-40 years) , Floppy disc/magnetic tapes (5-50 years), vinyl records (30-120 years), books (high/low acid paper)(50-500 years), clay tablets (centuries/millennia) and eventually spoken word (tens/hundreds of millennia). Seeing as how much of the internet has gone dark both through lack of economic incentive or accidental erasure - it was not the most cheery conclusion. About how the more efficient we get with information storage, the more brittle it becomes. But also the longer information can last, the more it is liable to be changed with time. Think like the game of telephone. The big lesson take away I made from it all was that, it isn't so much the medium but the information. If it is useful or cherished, it will live far beyond its original medium. Knowledge of hygiene will live a lot longer than season 3 of Survivor on DVD. Video games are cherished and many are living way beyond their original medium. We will loose 99.99% of all data produced over the last few decades but that it mostly stuff that nobody had any need or desire to keep - and that is totally fine. It is basically a natural filter for quality, and while we may be concerned about what we may loose, ultimately a quality statement will be made. Information about the taxation system of 1956 will not last as long as the I Ching which has already gone millennia.