Forgot your password? Data Storage  Avoiding a Digital Dark Age
287  Posted by kdawson from the you-must-remember-this dept.
al0ha writes to recommend a worthwhile piece up at American
Scientist on the problems of archiving and data preservation in
an age where all data are stored digitally. "It seems
unavoidable that most of the data in our future will be digital,
so it behooves us to understand how to manage and preserve
digital data so we can avoid what some have called the 'digital
dark age.' This is the idea — or fear! — that if we cannot learn
to explicitly save our digital data, we will lose that data and,
with it, the record that future generations might use to
remember and understand us. ... Unlike the many venerable
institutions that have for centuries refined their techniques
for preserving analog data on clay, stone, ceramic or paper, we
have no corresponding reservoir of historical wisdom to teach us
how to save our digital data. That does not mean there is
nothing to learn from the past, only th