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| Hearsay: |
I’ve been thinking about this for a few years now. It’s long been an issue in tech circles that what seems like permanent data is in fact degrading slowly with each move. Further, the hardware, from drives to CDs to flash memory, is horrifically fragile. If you think your data is safe on one of those thumb drives, take a look at it again in a few years. Woosh. Then there’s the obsolescence of software to read old file formats. So now that writers are increasingly storing their archives digitally, and what with all this email shite, what’s going to happen down the road with their archives? For a while there, I was printing things out and storing them in boxes, but a combination of space issues, dead tree guilt, and the sad realization that no one will ever want my archives has made me invest in the massive free storage of Google. If the Goog goes down, I go down with it.
Electronically produced drafts, correspondence and editorial comments, sweated over by contemporary poets, novelists and nonfiction authors, are ultimately just a series of digits — 0’s and 1’s — written on floppy disks, CDs and hard drives, all of which degrade much faster than old-fashioned acid-free paper. Even if those storage media do survive, the relentless march of technology can mean that the older equipment and software that can make sense of all those 0’s and 1’s simply don’t exist anymore.
Imagine having a record but no record player.
All of which means that archivists are finding themselves trying to fend off digital extinction at the same time that they are puzzling through questions about what to save, how to save it and how to make that material accessible.
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March 16th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
I think we should all store our archives like we used to, on paper, which as we all know never degrades or gets lost.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Or is coloured/chewed on by toddlers.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Whenever I think of using a new digital form of storage of any information such as books on a e-reader, I pray to the e-Gods that the new form is not the next 8-track tape.
March 16th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Isn’t it ironic that ten years after publishers switch to acide free paper in order to avoid decay of books, publishing goes digital?
I think it’s important to save stuff in hard copy. Otherwise the only things that will be around in 100 years time are those publish-yourself print-outs.
March 16th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Ah, but someone does want your papers: archives. And they’ll pay handsomely, at least in terms of tax breaks. But – if I recall correctly – they pay by the box, so keep it all.
March 16th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
I had five years of electonic mail correspondance with a very dear friend stored into 3 1/2 floppy disks.. Even if I had a disk drive, I doubt the disks would work. It’s really sad. At the same time I have a box full of colorful handwritten letters and they are lovely to touch and re-read and arrange.
I just bought a 1T external hardrive. It looks so fragile, so plastic. I thought. I need another one to back up this one.
It makes no sense.
I do think that humanity will regret going completely digital.
March 16th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
The great irony of moving forward with technology is that it seems to create an even greater reliance on paper. I know at work for example the volume of email that gets printed out (and then left at the printer) is staggering. Paper will always be a preferred medium. Always.