Quote:
Originally Posted by wizwor
I think it's obvious. Digital records are fragile. It's easy to make or lost copies of things. A substantial dose of EMP could erase terabytes of history. Much of this cannot be consumed without technology. A hard drive crashes and you lost photos and home movies. Maybe treasured books.
In many ways, technology is like Henry Bemis' glasses.
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I very much agree with what you've said.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
That's no different than a library or house burning down. That's not something that is lost because of moving from a paper book to an ebook.
So no, it's not obvious. If you want to take that tact then it's MUCH MUCH easier to backup because of your 'concern'
Yes you need a display of some type to see it, but that's simply a difference, not a loss.
You can't read pbooks in the dark, eh?
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Although Wizwor focused primarily on the loss of media, he did make mention (in passing) to the need of technology to access that media. THAT is the greater and more hidden danger.
As every corporation attempts to carve out their own proprietary walled garden, they are increasing the danger by this fragmentation. At this point, it doesn't seem probable that there will be a problem, but with laws like DMCA and other consumer rights restricting legislation, that increases the chances of consumers losing access to media the previously purchased. Technology obsolescence, proprietary media format lockout, restrictive legislation... all the pieces are there.
I'm not saying that the danger will come to be, only that the danger exists... we should at least be aware. In much the same way as the Y2K issue. Because there was no catastrophes on 1/1/2000 people concluded that the Y2K scare was a hoax. Little did they realize that serious problems were avoided because of 10+ years of code rework that was done to avoid problems. I performed some Y2K repair work on some mission-critical applications that would have caused some serious issues in the banking industry were they not addressed.