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I've heard others lament the big problem of sorting through all the available content to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I agree, that may be the toughest battle of all. However, I think people are so dedicated to such a pursuit, as it is essentially part of human nature, that we will figure out a way, though it's anyone's guess whether it will be through direct examination or by use of technology, or some combination of both. (With coming up on 7 billion people on the planet, a 100% human-based filtering system is a distinct possibility, I think, just to give those people jobs.)
Fortunately, the establishment of this digital information age we're in means that it is easier to store data, to copy data, and to convert it to new formats as needed, with the application of much less effort than it would have taken to manually copy documents in the past. Therefore, the sooner old formatted documents can be converted to digital formats, the better (certainly the second toughest battle).
And as we work, we'll be constantly working out new and better ways to store more information, both the data itself, and the history of that data... systems like OEBPS that allow any amount of a document's history (author, origination, copyrights, original recording method, number of conversions, retranslations, etc, etc) to be included with the document itself, and not hunted up from a separate source, will be essential.
Hopefully, we'll also figure out a way to detect falsified documents and historical data, something that's far too easy to fake now, and could represent the third biggest challenge of the digital era... separating the lies from the truth.
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