Digital Dark Age

How many of you remember way back when ,before the internet and all this technology that is relied upon so heavily today?
Really wasn't that long ago in my mind, but then again I'm an old fart.I still remember when a computer was nothing more than a calculator and we were so cool by making the digits say hello and so on. LOL !

How would you fare if , say, there was for what ever reason a " digital dark age" that happened upon us? Seems one of the "fathers " of the internet seems to think that it's closer than one would think.

Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet", says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost.

Currently a Google vice-president, he believes this could occur as hardware and software become obsolete.

He fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a "digital Dark Age".

Mr Cerf made his comments at a large science conference in San Jose.

He arrived at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science stylishly dressed in a three-piece suit. This iconic figure, who helped define how data packets move around the net, is possibly the only Google employee who wears a tie.

I felt obliged to thank him for the internet, and he bowed graciously. "One is glad to be of service," he said humbly.

His focus now is to resolve a new problem that threatens to eradicate our history.

Our life, our memories, our most cherished family photographs increasingly exist as bits of information - on our hard drives or in "the cloud". But as technology moves on, they risk being lost in the wake of an accelerating digital revolution.

www.bbc.com...


Do you have hard copies of all your photos, music or any written material?

Just a scam to sell a product.

originally posted by: roth1
Just a scam to sell a product.

My good sir, you seem to have missed the point of this thread, but thank you for your response.

a reply to: oldworldbeliever

Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet", says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost.

The live portion of world events and open discussion about it is in danger of disappearing all the time. The propaganda ministry can't stand that we review their "releases" in open world wide discussion. Thats sacrilegious.

How dare we question their authority ? Old school knowledge base was one sided, top down newspapers, TV and radio. I remember that vacuum well.

Compared to that the internet is golden.

By the way don't worry about memory of life on earth being "lost'. Everyones mind is recording live all the days of their lives. Thats not going to be "obsoleted".

a reply to: intrptr

An example of the problem is my interpretation of what he was saying.

How many young people can do anything in DOS?

Just because everyone is on pretty much the same page technology wise now, doesn't mean your grandkids will be able to make heads or tails out of today's tech.

If that happens things stored on today's tech will be lost to future generations.

a reply to: Irishhaf

posted on Feb, 14 2015 @ 07:52 AM link quote reply a reply to: intrptr

An example of the problem is my interpretation of what he was saying.

How many young people can do anything in DOS?

Just because everyone is on pretty much the same page technology wise now, doesn't mean your grandkids will be able to make heads or tails out of today's tech.

There will always be the hackers. The techno nerd industrial complex is a double edged sword. As long as there are electronic connections, there are doors to be opened.

a reply to: oldworldbeliever

A very real possibility. Old formats become obsolete. Look at 8 Tracks


Digital data is not permanent for many reasons.

Literature has being re-written and history is next.

I chucked my E-Reader years ago.

We will always have access to our info unless you destroy it. Or a large EMP hits. Or are dumb enough to put it on the cloud. Like i said he is just selling his product.a reply to: oldworldbeliever

originally posted by: roth1
Just a scam to sell a product.

Maybe you came along after the reel-to-reel tape recorders bit the dust, or the 8-tracks or the cassettes?
How about the old floppy computer disks, the mini-disks, the 45rpm records, the 78rpm records. Oh, how about film cameras, both movie type and still type. The list is endless.
Some of us were there and know quite well what that man is talking about.
We have boxes and boxes to prove it of these forms of record-keeping to prove it.

Anyone can see that eventually a micro-sized device will contain all of your data.

What needs to be assured is a secure, cheap and easy to use ability to transfer one type of data onto a newer process.

I recall all of that. As new technology came out people transferred the info from one medium to another, yes. Cd's came out and most had a 3.5 inch floppy at the same time and backed up their stuff on tier own. When tapes came out people back up real to real. Fall for the crap, be dependent on others. It's your choice. But guess what the technology still exists. Many places you can still buy them used. Can still be back up everything that ever existed and none of the information is lost. a reply to: Aliensun

a reply to: oldworldbeliever

Interesting post. In relation to computing we can use the floppy disk as an example. New computers don't support this but you can easily buy an external floppy drive to solve that problem. If something overtakes the usb for eg im pretty sure similar devices will be created so we can still show our great grandkids our old photos.

Our data if stored only in the cloud could well be lost if the host server (physical building) and it's back up buildings are destroyed. We would need to destroy a lot of servers to wipe all our cloud data and many are hidden for good reason.

When learning computing, students are taught the same fundamentals as they were 15 years ago because they don't change when you are talking about low level programming and the structure of computer architecture.

The only way I can see things changing is when quantum computing becomes mainstream. Then we would all need to learn the architecture of these computers and probably take on a degree in quantum mechanics.

Perhaps students of the future will study quantum computing science degrees, I hope our brains can take it. But there will always be a preservation of the past knowledge because we as humans cherish our technological advances and in the future we will have people who cherish their antique apple mac passed down from their great grandfather or bought on hyperEbay.zom, just as today we have people who love their 8-bit atari systems and the like.

Its actually becoming easier to preserve our data in its current form - binary - as this is universal. Old style video recorders and your cassette tapes are different and can decay.

Binary, if cared for, has the potential to be eternal.
;-)

It's nothing new, it's called "format obsolescence".

As part of my work in a company that produces software for historic archives (among other products), that was something we had to look at some years ago.

That's the reason why I am trying to get enough money to convert my family's old Super 8 movies into digital format and why I converted more than 100 cassettes (at work) to digital format in 2013.

All my important floppy disks and Zip disks were already converted to other formats, and I keep old programs (and use emulators when needed) to have access to old file formats.

originally posted by: Psynic
a reply to: oldworldbeliever

A very real possibility. Old formats become obsolete. Look at 8 Tracks


Digital data is not permanent for many reasons.

Literature has being re-written and history is next.

I chucked my E-Reader years ago.

I'm interested as to why you believe digital data is not permanent. Care to share the many reasons?

I agree that there is some danger of history being rewritten in relation to our Internet data. The new 'right to be forgotten' law created by our kind government forces isps to erase data from the net if someone disagrees with it. Obviously and predictably, this law is being abused by the elite to hide their dirty tracks in their corrupt affairs but thats another topic altogether. ;-)

There will always be those who cling to the old and familiar - I have a stack of newspaper front pages accumulated during my lifetime - JFK assassination, NASA, etc. I can pull them out, read the words again, and know that I am seeing exactly what I saw all those years ago.

I do not have the same sense of concrete reality about electronic data. It has not stayed exclusively within my control in that cloud. I go way back to the days of the Commodore, and I have seen computers carry out the most damaging commands, corruption of data, and yes, DOS command lines, etc. We have come a long way baby, but for some of us, the tactile feel of paper in hand means that THAT data will not change, for whatever reason, deliberate alteration or accidental deterioration...as long as the paper is legible, the words are real. Don't worry, we won't be clogging up the information highway much longer, us old fossils

originally posted by: cronemel
We have come a long way baby, but for some of us, the tactile feel of paper in hand means that THAT data will not change, for whatever reason, deliberate alteration or accidental deterioration...as long as the paper is legible, the words are real.

The problem is that the paper does not last forever, so the now legible words may not be so if something happens.

I was once on the Portuguese National Archives and saw one technician preparing some antibiotics to treat an old document that was starting to get eaten by some bacteria.

Handling original documents is a good way of reducing their life, so making digital copies and keeping the originals in a safe environment is the best choice, but for that we must remember that all things that need some kind of tool to be used (regardless of it being digital or not, like microfilm) are subject to obsolescence, and the best alternative (so far) is keeping on changing to new formats.

PS: when they were scanning the documents from the Lisbon Inquisition they put the original documents inside special plastic envelopes, but they didn't close the envelopes because that could create a humid environment because of the natural humidity of the documents if the envelope got slightly hotter during the process. Keeping the originals in good conditions is as difficult (or even more difficult) than keeping the copies.

a reply to: cronemel

I am with you on that I'm a collector of old books myself. But most of our digital info started out that way so to commit all of that info onto paper would surley be offensive to trees!

originally posted by: daftpink

originally posted by: Psynic
a reply to: oldworldbeliever

A very real possibility. Old formats become obsolete. Look at 8 Tracks


Digital data is not permanent for many reasons.

Literature has being re-written and history is next.

I chucked my E-Reader years ago.

I'm interested as to why you believe digital data is not permanent. Care to share the many reasons?

I agree that there is some danger of history being rewritten in relation to our Internet data. The new 'right to be forgotten' law created by our kind government forces isps to erase data from the net if someone disagrees with it. Obviously and predictably, this law is being abused by the elite to hide their dirty tracks in their corrupt affairs but thats another topic altogether. ;-)

One EMP strike or power cut, and it is very hard to access that data when you need - you also need a generator and fuel to get back those bits. I guess the future will be the ability to encode information inside a diamond crystal as holograms and then use a light source to project the information back onto a flat surface. Simply by rotating the crystal and a different image would appear. Mass produce those and information would last forever.

I've had various data formats going all the way from 5.4" floppy disks for 8-bit Atari computers to PC clones, zip drives, 3.5" floppy disks, 20 Mbyte then 40 Mbyte hard disk drives Tid-Bit 60 Mbyte laptop hard disk drives, San Disk 80 Mbyte flash cards, USB memory sticks, a variety of external USB hard disk drives (6 Gigabyte, 40 Gigabyte, 80 Gigabyte, 250 Gigabyte and now 2 Terabytes). With small increments of technology, it's easy to transfer data using suitable software; Kermit over RS-232, disk transfer software, external USB cases, but leave enough generations, and it's impossible read data because the connectors and electrical standards have changed. First desktop PC's stored the disk format (cylinders, tracks, sectors) in the BIOS.

But with modern technology, we're having more information in digital form, that is quickly lost or overwritten.
All those old Byte magazines from the 1970's to 1990's are now in digital form if you know where to look. While we didn't have high-speed internet back then, buying a 300 page Byte magazine was the equivalent of getting a printout of everything you would download over the next 30 days. Hardware reviews, programming articles, adverts, training courses. A whole snapshot of the state of the computer industry packed into a magazine.

a reply to: oldworldbeliever

It can be a problem. The stories of people going through extraordinary efforts to restore old NASA data related to the moon landings are relevant, and show what it takes to get some archaic data recording devices operational again. But let's face it, most information isn't going to be motivating people to go through that much trouble to restore it, as much as a historic occasion like putting men on the moon. Here's one of the old stories and it also mentions how just as 40-50 old tech is obsolete today, our tech of today probably won't be readable by the tech used 40-50 years from now:

Tale of the TV Tapes: Apollo 11 Mission

Back in July 1969, the first moonwalks by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are frozen forever moments in the history books. But it turns out that millions of riveted spectators back on Earth were on the receiving end of substantially degraded television showing the epic event.

The highest-quality television signal from Apollo 11's touchdown zone in the moon's Sea of Tranquility--from an antenna mounted atop the Eagle lunar lander--was recorded on telemetry tapes at three tracking stations on Earth: Goldstone in California and Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes in Australia.

Scads of the tapes were produced--and now a search is on to locate them. And if recovered and given a 21st century digital makeover, they could yield a far sharper view of that momentous day, compared to what was broadcast around the globe. ...

The entire lunar data hide and seek saga that's alive and well here in the U.S. is being repeated in Russia too. "I work with people in Moscow who are trying to recover old lunar data," Stooke added.

The worry that old Apollo tapes can deteriorate is a valid concern, Stooke said. "Migration of data to new media is essential in digital archiving...and it's an ongoing problem."

What about the CD-ROMs of today? Are they going to be readable in 50 years?

"Don't count on it," Stooke responded.

Everyone knows that hard drives can die in an instant, so you back up on some other format. Tapes don't hold enough anymore, so you can back up on optical disks, but I've burned DVDs that I could read a week later, but not a year later. Even the highest quality optical discs that are writable don't claim to be readable for that long. Printing to paper should last longer but it's subject to degradation too.

So I think there is some validity to the concerns about digital data life. Just look at the Apollo examples and the nightmares of trying to read those old formats with machines that either no longer exist or need repair with components that are no longer manufactured.

I store everything on a external hard drive.
Photos, music, important mails and
other documents.. The drive is like
a vault...Only conected when used.

I made the misstake once of storing
photos on my mobicam but somehow
it got erased, gf didnt like that....

People think I am weird because I like having all my books (1000+) in print. No, I don't want your e-reader crap. Lose the charger or internet access and they are worthless.

People in the future are going to have different technology than we do today and might not be able to access our records at all. Could you imagine trying to access information that was stored on a Beta video cassette tape today? Good luck finding a beta player or trying to recreate the technology to play it.