Quote:
Originally Posted by Mare of Earth
One of the common arguments for pbook over ebook is that pbooks can survive centuries.
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Yes, and a common aspect of that is a claim that files from 20 or 30 years ago are unreadable and useless today. This is something I feel compelled to address. I've had a computer, of one type or another since 1981. I've been using computers for word processing for as long. Over the years I've moved stuff I wanted to save to new formats and storage media as hardware and software changed. I still have short stories, book reports, diaries, and term papers and what not I wrote on my very first home computer. I can still view and edit them on my current computers just as I could a quarter century ago.
Computer files can be preserved with diligence and forethought. It isn't even terribly difficult. In the early days I used 8" disks, then 5.25" disks, then 3.5" disks, zip disks, and eventually CD and DVD-ROMs. Sure, I've lost stuff to the media fade which magnetic media succumbs to over the decades. But it was stuff I didn't think was important and didn't move to new media as quickly as I did the stuff that was important.