[Tig] archive formats

[Rob Lingelbach]

we've talked about it before on the TIG (how to be sure your content
will be accessible indefinitely), but just thought I'd add a quote
from an article written
by Vint Cerf and on the BBC website today at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6960896.stm

[speaking of the future of the internet]----
We will also be confronted with a kind of "information decay" in
which digital objects become less and less accessible owing to the
age of the software that created it.

As an example: it is already a challenge to watch videos posted on
the BBC website in 1997.

Imagine trying to watch the same video in 100 years. Or in one
thousand years.

It's not only file formats that change, though. Changes in computer
programs, operating systems and even the hardware that we use to
build computers will accentuate the challenge of keeping digital
information meaningful.
[end quoted material]

Cerf is something of a legendary figure in noncommercial network
engineering, so it wasn't very appropriate for him, as Chief
Internet Evangelist of Google, to promote the use of search engines
in the article.  His title is also extremely unpoetic :].  But his
point in the article is well put.


-- 
Rob Lingelbach  rob at colorist.org
http://www.colorist.org/robhome.html