The digital age is causing history to be lost - OFFICIAL

[23skidoo]

Myself and the many others who have been bitching about the replacement of physical non-volatile media (i.e. paper, CDs, DVDs) with digital downloads and MP3s and the like have been called luddites, behind the times, dinosaurs, and (by the more ill-mannered out there) assholes.

Well now we have the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS on our side.

Read it and weep (no, really, weep because this is a damn depressing story). According to a new LOC study recordings that exist only in digital form are being lost much faster than recordings on analog sources.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/29/historic-audio-recordings-fading_n_744211.html

This rather distressing news somewhat dampens the vindication I feel. I've been warning people about this for years.

And in fact this isn't even new information. As early as 2002 the British government reported that it had lost, forever, a number of historical documents that had been transferred to digital, the originals lost, and the digital files became inaccessible due to changes in technology.

And people want to replace our books with e-book files, our movies with downloads, and all our music with MP3s. They're great as a compliment, but it's insane that companies and consumers are hellbent on installing them as a replacement.

Alex

 

[sojourner]

We can remember it for you... wholesale.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

And in fact this isn't even new information. As early as 2002 the British government reported that it had lost, forever, a number of historical documents that had been transferred to digital, the originals lost, and the digital files became inaccessible due to changes in technology.

"Sorry, we regret to inform you that we've just lost our digital transfers of Doctor Who."




I can't imagine what they would have stored them on in 2002 that would be inaccessible now. Jaz drives?

 

[bigdaddy]

Is why I hate ebooks. I rather have a paper copy than a denoted copy from amazon

 

[Gaith]

From the article:

The first comprehensive study of the preservation of sound recordings in the U.S., released by the Library of Congress, also found many historical recordings already have been lost or can't be accessed by the public. That includes most of radio's first decade from 1925 to 1935.

That sucks, but is it the digital files' fault?

Moral of the story, have at least two separate hard drives store all your vital files.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I can't imagine what they would have stored them on in 2002 that would be inaccessible now. Jaz drives?

I have CD-W's from 1999 - 2000 that have gone bad with age.

 

[cultcross]

Hang on, you're OK with CDs and DVDs but then hate digital storage? CDs and DVDs are digital. They're also not non-volatile. Neither is paper, particularly. I came across some plan drawings down the back of a filing cabinet at work the other day from 1995 which literally fell apart in my hands.

Also, that article says that analogue storage devices such as cassette tapes are seriously in danger too. Also that the problem is hardly one of the 'digital age':

The first comprehensive study of the preservation of sound recordings in the U.S., released by the Library of Congress, also found many historical recordings already have been lost or can't be accessed by the public. That includes most of radio's first decade from 1925 to 1935.
Shows by musicians Duke Ellington and Bing Crosby, as well as the earliest sports broadcasts, are already gone. There was little financial incentive for such broadcasters as CBS to save early sound files, Brylawski said.

The point of the article is that we hardly ever undergo decent preservation of anything, assuming that things just last (or worse that we don't think they'll have any value in the future so why bother). This isn't a flaw of the digital age, it's long been the case, which is why so much from the early days of television is gone forever. Proper archiving and preserving just doesn't happen enough. That's the problem here.

 

[C.E. Evans]

^^^
Yeah, I think the argument can go both ways because without proper care, both physical and digital-only media can be lost. Bit errors could lead to digital files being severely corrupted or even accidentally deleted by mistake, while CDs and cassettes can deteriorate over time if they were made with cheap materials and/or subjected to heavy usage.

 

[Rett Mikhal]

Everything falls apart. Even punch cards made out of titanium and locked away in an argon filled vault are useless when the punchcard reader goes out of tolerance and can't tell you a damn thing.

The only way to preserve history is to reverse Entropy.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

There's also the fact a lot of things are being lost because of copyright. The British Library have been lobbying to be allowed to convert and digitally archive things but because of changes to copyright law allowing companies to renew copyright and effectively never become public domain they have to get the right holders permission before they're allowed to, and it's not always granted or they're unable to contact them and it would mean breaking the law.

 

[Holdfast]

I don't really see this as being an issue of the data medium, more one of data itself.

Collecting and preserving things indefinitely is expensive and difficult. Physical media are bulky and often require special environments, as well as being more unique than digital data, so it's not as if their safe storage is cheaper than digital data. Naturally, there are limits to the expense any organisation or society will give to this function of data preservation. Unless you prioritised it to a much higher level, there will always be massive data loss, and given the number of competing and more immediate demands on financial resources, that's unlikely to happen. I'm also not convinced that its current priority level is incorrect, given those other more urgent, competing demands.

Even the Library of Alexandria eventually succumbed to fire...

 

[Reverend]

Ironically, the most reliable and enduring way to store information is one of the first ever used, i.e. chiselling it into big slabs of granite. Though it'd take a lot of granite to encode even a simple data file and you'll eventually loose bits to wind and water erosion.
The real key is to decentralise archiving and disseminate copies far and wide and make sure new copies are made on a regular basis. That is after all how books stay in print over decades or even centuries.

 

[UssGlenn]

Preserving digital files is all about data migration. Every few years you have to covert all your files to the newest file type and move them to a now storage medium. This is a lot of trouble and thus doesn't always get done. Archives are always near the top of the list for budget cuts. At least with physical data you have a much longer time between migrations. For example, vinyl records are extremely stable and will last much longer than a CD.

 

[Teelie]

The thing with data is no matter what format it's in, the more you have of it the more easily it's lost. Digital is in theory the ultimate way to store it. It can be replicated far more easily and indefinitely than other existing formats but it's also more volatile and easily damaged or destroyed.

On the other hand, other physical media lasts longer and is not as easily affected by seemingly minor things like magnets or power outages but it takes more effort and space to store the same amount of information.

That's the trade off. Ease of use, ease of loss versus ease of longevity and the immense amount of space to keep it in (comparatively).

 

[Spot's Meow]

Preserving digital files is all about data migration. Every few years you have to covert all your files to the newest file type and move them to a now storage medium. This is a lot of trouble and thus doesn't always get done. Archives are always near the top of the list for budget cuts. At least with physical data you have a much longer time between migrations. For example, vinyl records are extremely stable and will last much longer than a CD.

Very true. Digital isn't necessarily bad, but there just isn't the budget to keep it going over long periods of time. When creating your budget you can make the case for physical media preservation because the costs are spread out over time. Whereas with digital, it requires large spurts of money every few years to keep migrating it. It may end up to be the same dollar amount over time or even cheaper than the physical storage, but it is much harder to justify the immediate costs when asking for money. The archivists may be willing to look at the long term hundreds of years from now, but the people providing the money usually aren't.

Anyway, having worked in a large archive this is a serious issue we faced every day. It's certainly not news to us that things can't be accessed because the technology has been lost. We have many media formats that we have trouble even identifying because they were so rare or niche or lasted for so short a period. There are other things that we could read if we had the money to invest in the technology (like tons of dictabelts and giant floppy disks) but it again comes back to cost. If you are a top university archive you probably have a better shot at getting that money, but if you are a public entity or a smaller archive, you are out of luck. It's just another item to go on the "someday" wish list, but by the time you get it there may be 20 new digital formats that were created and then died, leaving you with even more documents that you can't access.

So you can see why there is a reluctance to migrate physical media to digital form. There is a lot of guesswork involved (guessing which digital format will stick around longest so that you don't have to migrate as often), and there is a lack of funds. This is why microfilm rocks! It lasts for hundreds of years, takes up little space, and can be read with a lighted surface and magnifying glass if the power goes out.

 

[Skywalker]

This reminds me of the episode of The Batman where Mr. Freeze is still around 1000 years in the future, and archeologists discover the Batcave, complete with instructions on how to defeat Mr. Freeze that Batman had etched onto titanium because he knew his computers wouldn't last that long.

 

[ALF]

DVDs are a fucking terrible medium due to the fact that an incredible small scratch can render the data unreadable.

This was why I was so pissed (and still am) that Blu-Ray was "chosen" to be the next generation of medium for storage. And although I was shown links and sources that claimed Blu-Ray had all kinds of coats of scratch resistant layers, you still can't treat them as poorly as say, a 3 1/2" diskette for example. That was a storage medium that was nearly indestructible. VHS was great, until a VCR got hungry and ate it.

And now what? Half my fucking DVDs have scratches even though I removed them and store them ever so gingerly... and I couldn't find a 3 1/2" diskette reader to save my life!

Yep... I'll go with hardcopies. Print out the very best photos. Put important documents in a file somewhere. Take your most valued digital copies and email them to yourself.

 

[JarodRussell]

And then nobody in thousand years will be able to make anything of a JPEG or MPEG file. And beware of copy protection systems. How the fuck are the historians supposed to get the proper key?

 

[FPAlpha]

And then nobody in thousand years will be able to make anything of a JPEG or MPEG file. And beware of copy protection systems. How the fuck are the historians supposed to get the proper key?

If it's a good archive they'll include everything needed to view the file.

It's easy to blame the digital age when physical stuff get's lost but why is it lost in the first place? Because someone lost or misplaced the physical original.

How is that that the fault of the digital age? Isn't it rather fingerpointing by a group who prefer non-digital things and lament that everything is only digital now thus losing something vital to them?

Moral of the story? Don't lose the originals! And when you do don't try to shift blame elsewhere!

 

[Trekker4747]

DVDs are a fucking terrible medium due to the fact that an incredible small scratch can render the data unreadable.

This was why I was so pissed (and still am) that Blu-Ray was "chosen" to be the next generation of medium for storage. And although I was shown links and sources that claimed Blu-Ray had all kinds of coats of scratch resistant layers, you still can't treat them as poorly as say, a 3 1/2" diskette for example. That was a storage medium that was nearly indestructible. VHS was great, until a VCR got hungry and ate it.

And now what? Half my fucking DVDs have scratches even though I removed them and store them ever so gingerly... and I couldn't find a 3 1/2" diskette reader to save my life!

Yep... I'll go with hardcopies. Print out the very best photos. Put important documents in a file somewhere. Take your most valued digital copies and email them to yourself.

If a DVD has a scratch in it you can simply get the protective layer replaced/resurfaced to make the DVD readable again. I've done it before. And if your player cannot read DVDs with a tiny scratch in it you need a new player. Some of my DVDs have minor scratches on it and are read just fine by my player(s). More severe scratches? Not so much. But, as I said, they can be repaired.