Researcher Warns of "Digital Dark Age" 367
alphadogg writes "A assistant professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is sounding a warning that companies, the government and researchers need to come up with a plan for preserving our increasingly digitized data in light of shifting document management and other software platforms (think WordPerfect and floppy disks). Jerome P. McDonough, who teaches at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says there exists about 369 exabytes worth of data, and that includes some pretty hard to replace stuff, including tax files, email and photos. Open standards could play a key role in any preservation effort, he says. 'If we can't keep today's information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture,' McDonough said. Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date.'"
I say (Score:5, Funny)
And who needs to store pictures and movies on their computers anyway? In fact, I think the world would be a better place without them!
Now if you excuse me, I'm going back to watching Iron Man on my wrist watch.
Marketing and Management already know! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Marketing and Management already know! (Score:5, Funny)
In the cloud? Oh my god! What happens when it rains?! The farmers will have all our data! We'll have to sue the farmers for their harvest, since their crops will contain all the data and applications!
Re:Best thing about digital dark age... (Score:2, Funny)
*********DOR!
Well at least that's all we got out of the Word files describing the beast.
Re:Floppies (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Marketing and Management already know! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure the story tellers of old laughed in the same was as the cave painter said, "Ug draw this story on wall."
Re:Floppies (Score:2, Funny)
In mspaint, yeah
Re:I say (Score:5, Funny)
um..do you have a link to that watch?
And more importantly, a song:
sung to the spiderman tune.
"Iron Man, Iron Man
Does whatever an iron can
Presses pants really fine
Keeps those pleats right in line
Look out! Here comes the Iron Man" - Marvel
He's needs tenure (Score:3, Funny)
Look, he's an Assistant Professor, not an Associate Professor. He just got his PhD a coupola years ago and somehow he managed to land a job. He needs to publish something, anything. He needs tenure. So he's saying the library (OK: 'Data' if you will) is on fire and we need a government rule to protect it. The librarians are going to nod wisely and agree with him (I'm a librarian and I've seen way too many wisely nodding librarians in my time.) It's all a bit of a smoke and mirrors thing and he'll be able to milk this for a few more articles to put on his c.v. He's whoring for points just like on /.
Meh?
Re:not to worry.... (Score:3, Funny)
They're not printing this on paper, right?
Can't you print into a PDF and convert it to a TIFF with ImageMagick and give the OCR thingy that file?
Would go a lot faster, too...
Re:Anal (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, but the Library of Alexandria was the offsite backup. This is why we need 3 copies of our important data. ^_^
Re:Anal (Score:3, Funny)
This is the first time I've seen a post titled "Anal" modded +5 Insightful.
Re:Marketing and Management already know! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Best thing about digital dark age... (Score:3, Funny)
"I didn't know you could do that! Why would anyone want to grow celery that way?
Re:Books? (Score:2, Funny)
> âoeIf we canâ(TM)t keep todayâ(TM)s information alive for future generations,â McDonough said, âoewe will lose a lot of our culture.â
haha, that was perfect! we lost your data in 3 seconds because of lack of standards compliance.
Re:They won't care either (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe we should bury a time capsule, to be opened in 1000 years. In that time capsule, a strange black object, with a wheel and a screen. And from that object, when powered on, comes a voice from the past: Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down...