Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
You mean you only need a dust free, air conditioned and humidity controlled storage facility? And special gloves and lights for handling them? And a way to keep the small rodents and insects out, of course.
This "digital media will be obsolete" is just silly scare tactics to get you to buy paperbooks. Backing up doesn't take much effort for such small file sizes.
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No it's not. You are ignoring the factor of the time scale. Yes, if you don't take all the precautions you mention they won't last a thousand years. With only minor precautions, however, they will last a human lifetime (I have plenty of books from the 40's and before; no special effort was made to preserve them, as far as I can tell). The same is not true for electronic media which, besides being vulnerable to many of the things you've mentioned (floods, fires, etc.) degrade more quickly than books do or become obsolete. I have many books from my childhood which are in perfectly good order. The electronic files from that same time period are gone. There is of course the other issue of requiring a specialized reading device which, if it is lost, stolen, or destroyed, will deprive you of access to your e-library until another is purchased. And these devices are a hell of a lot more fragile than paper books.
Not to mention when the great EMP of doom comes...