Couldn't agree more. I think there are some fascinating areas for research here. I was able to find this: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/rothenberg/research.h

Couldn't agree more. I think there are some fascinating areas for research here. I was able to find this: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/rothenberg/research.html http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/rothenberg/research.html which is talking about how we can preserve digital documents for the future by creating a well-specified emulator of current software. But short of dumping data to a machine-readable but paper-based (or microfilm) format, I don't think there are any really long-lasting options out there.