|
What worries me more is that most of our media these days requires an electric current to access it. I'm not saying that the apocalypse is coming (it most likely isn't), but the idea makes me pause: if something were to make us lose access to electricity, what happens to all of our data? How will our current storage methods affect future generations trying to learn about the past? We've been able to dig up ancient stone tablets to learn about the distant past; we have books and paintings that are hundreds of years old. They require nothing more than our eyes to get information from them. If someone in the future digs up a hard drive (ignoring the extreme likelihood that the materials of the hard drive will have deteriorated in some way), will they be able to figure out how to get the data off of it?
I wonder if we shouldn't be investing in some kind of more permanent storage solution that doesn't require power and can survive a significant amount of time without degrading...
|