Mar 28, 2016 05:54 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html
EXCERPT: . . . We’re now in the midst of the most far-reaching shift in media ever, as we rush to replace all manner of physical media with digital alternatives. The benefits are compelling. We’ve gained instant access to a seemingly infinite store of information. But there are losses, too. “Digital memory is ubiquitous yet unimaginably fragile,” Rumsey reports, “limitless in scope yet inherently unstable.” All media are subject to decay, of course. Clay cracks, paper crumbles. What’s different now is that our cultural memory is embedded in a complex and ever-shifting system of technologies. Any change in the system can render the record unreadable. A book can sit on a shelf for hundreds of years and retain its legibility. All that’s required to decode it is a pair of eyes. A digital file is far more fussy. Dependent on computers for decoding, it can disappear or turn to gibberish whenever operating systems, software applications or document standards are revised.
All of us have experienced the evanescence of the digital. Web pages change by the day, leaving little or no trace of their earlier versions. Hyperlinks dead-end in 404 error pages, with their irritating “Not Found” notices. Internet services and social-media sites shut down, their data disappearing with them. And as for opening that file you saved on a floppy disk with an obsolete software program: Well, good luck. If we’re not careful, Rumsey warns, “the history of the twenty-first century will be riddled with large-scale blanks and silences.”...
EXCERPT: . . . We’re now in the midst of the most far-reaching shift in media ever, as we rush to replace all manner of physical media with digital alternatives. The benefits are compelling. We’ve gained instant access to a seemingly infinite store of information. But there are losses, too. “Digital memory is ubiquitous yet unimaginably fragile,” Rumsey reports, “limitless in scope yet inherently unstable.” All media are subject to decay, of course. Clay cracks, paper crumbles. What’s different now is that our cultural memory is embedded in a complex and ever-shifting system of technologies. Any change in the system can render the record unreadable. A book can sit on a shelf for hundreds of years and retain its legibility. All that’s required to decode it is a pair of eyes. A digital file is far more fussy. Dependent on computers for decoding, it can disappear or turn to gibberish whenever operating systems, software applications or document standards are revised.
All of us have experienced the evanescence of the digital. Web pages change by the day, leaving little or no trace of their earlier versions. Hyperlinks dead-end in 404 error pages, with their irritating “Not Found” notices. Internet services and social-media sites shut down, their data disappearing with them. And as for opening that file you saved on a floppy disk with an obsolete software program: Well, good luck. If we’re not careful, Rumsey warns, “the history of the twenty-first century will be riddled with large-scale blanks and silences.”...