On Fri, June 26, 2009 08:50, lookaround360@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Once data is digital it WILL live forever. > > I see no reason why data storage couldn't expand to "infinite" capacity > soon - and with it the means of extracting itself. Advancing search > engine technology will be recognized as vital to existence and forever > be refined. We already have PDF and DOC files being presented as HTML by Google, for example; something similar could be done for image formats, if we outgrow JPEG and PNG. > Most likely, so called "dark energy" or "dark matter," the stuff that > makes up most of the Known Universe AKA "The Big Attic in the Sky," is > stored data. Been saying this for years :-} And "computronium", sure! > > Here's a neat story about mining old picture data: > > http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/ And what that's showing us is how close we came to losing some rather major data from a big project. Now imagine the loss risks for more minor stuff! The key point about digital archives is that they really need to be well-curated; they do NOT thrive on a program of benign neglect. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
