There are some pretty old commercial organisations out there. One list [1] has several that have existed for over 1000 years. Whether they would be capable of s

There are some pretty old commercial organisations out there. One list [1] has several that have existed for over 1000 years. Whether they would be capable of storing data (or would even be interested in doing so) is hard to say, but there have at least demonstrated that long-term organisational continuity is possible, and that presumably requires some organisational 'memory'. Having a long history obviously isn't a predictor of future stability. According to the Long Now Foundation site [2], a Japanese company that existed since 578CE went bust in 2007. [1] http://www.bizaims.com/content/the-100-oldest-companies-world http://www.bizaims.com/content/the-100-oldest-companies-worl... [2] http://blog.longnow.org/02008/06/13/the-100-oldest-companies/ http://blog.longnow.org/02008/06/13/the-100-oldest-companies...