3 ms·
> Analog data decays too. Sure but at what rate? Most 20 year old CDs are still fine, to say nothing of paper stored with a sliver of care, what percentage of
by jarek 12y ago
> Analog data decays too.
Sure but at what rate? Most 20 year old CDs are still fine, to say nothing of paper stored with a sliver of care, what percentage of web companies from 1995 are still around?
- evgen 12y agoConsider this fact, for perhaps a hundred years prior to digital technology consuming just about everything we collectively produced gigatons of paper output. How much of that is available today? A thousandth of a percent perhaps? Almost all of it has been lost and most of what does remain is available because it was related to someone famous or some famous event, or because it was widely replicated. Digital data is easy to replicate and spread widely. Given how cheap it is to store and how it gets cheaper every day it is not inconceivable that every bit that is generated and "donated to the public" will survive forever.
- agumonkey 12y agoNot so fast. If you abandon your house anything in it will be trashed in 20 years. Humidity, fungus, animals, whatever. Data you mention has been wiped or the medium has been destroyed. I have some old Seagate 6GB IDE hard drives that are still working properly. So maybe web companies data could have been around if their hdd had been stored in a nice location.