Librarians and archivists have written about this. Long-standing governments have needs in this area as well (must keep track of people over generations). (Just giving you areas you can search ... I haven't read about these things in a long time so don't have any specific documents to refer you to). archive.org is an attempt to preserve some digital info - another possiblel place to look for info on this topic. bjb On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 08:17:30AM -0400, Richard Guy Briggs wrote: > On 2019-07-20 05:44, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > > good friend of mine is starting a research project, looking into > > what i will call "digital transience" ... she is using a slightly > > different term and would prefer i not use it for the time being. > > > > the idea is fairly obvious ... the danger of digital content > > vanishing for any of a number of reasons: dropping support for > > proprietary data formats, physical media (5 1/4" floppy drives, Zip > > drives(?)) vanishing, link rot, entire site rot, and so on. so she's > > interested in a couple things. > > > > first, just *general* contributors to the unexpected loss of what > > might be important corporate digital data. but also, real-life > > examples of things like this -- the one that leaps to mind is the > > recent microsoft debacle involving ebooks protected by DRM: > > > > https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/ > > > > i think that, of the two topics above, she's more interested in > > actual examples of significant loss of digital data, not through any > > sort of malice, but by accident or unforeseen developments in hardware > > or data formats that suddenly cause a catastrophic loss of > > information. > > > > i've already started a list, but i'm open to as many examples as i > > can collect. thoughts? > > This is a pretty interesting topic. > > This has happenned with every sort of media in the past... Though stone > tablets are a bit more durable than 8-tracks and don't burn at 451 > degrees farenheiht... > > This sounds like the kind of stuff that Russell McOrmond and Joseph > Potvin would be interested in. I'm sure you would start a lively > discussion over on ottawa-gosling [ at ] list [ dot ] goslingcommunity [ dot ] org > > > rday > > slainte mhath, RGB > > -- > Richard Guy Briggs -- ~\ -- ~\ <hpv.tricolour.ca> > <www.TriColour.ca> -- \___ o \@ @ Ride yer bike! > Ottawa, ON, CANADA -- Lo_>__M__\\/\%__\\/\% > Vote! -- <greenparty.ca>_____GTVS6#790__(*)__(*)________(*)(*)_________________ > > To unsubscribe send a blank message to linux+unsubscribe [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org > To get help send a blank message to linux+help [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org > To visit the archives: https://lists.linux-ottawa.org > ---end quoted text--- To unsubscribe send a blank message to linux+unsubscribe [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org To get help send a blank message to linux+help [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org To visit the archives: https://lists.linux-ottawa.org