According to a
BBC News story, "The growing problem of accessing old digital file formats is a 'ticking time bomb', the chief executive of the UK National Archives has warned." It is probably fortunate that librarians and archivists are on the early edge of dealing with such problems. Firstly, because they tend to be more equipped and more determined to find solutions. And, secondly, because they carry much more weight with the public.
E-book readers are well aware that there is not only a format longevity issue, but that it is greatly compounded by the addition of DRM, in conjunction with the rapid changes in computing technologies and platforms.
Amazingly, Microsoft's UK head Gordon Frazer warned of a looming "digital dark age". He added: "Unless more work is done to ensure legacy file formats can be read and edited in the future, we face a digital dark hole." So there is now another war for the preservation of documents in open formats. Microsoft "has developed a new document file format, called Open XML, which is used to save files from programs such Word, Excel and Powerpoint." On the other side of the spectrum is the "Open Document Format".
Throw those together with all the reflowable e-book standards and you have a real alphabet soup of formats. Will we ever see sanity in the e-book and document worlds? Good question!