[ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982

[Leo Vegoda]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 09:41:44AM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 8/10/2016 8:56 AM, Leo Vegoda wrote:
> >Even with incomplete sets of records, the last century will offer
> >historians a scale of documentation without precedent to future
> >historians.
> 
> Likely true, assuming the electrons and polarized bits don't degrade. Which
> they will...
> 
> And assuming they still have the software to interpret the bits.  Which they
> might not...

I believe this is where national archives and university libraries
come in. They both have a direct interest in obtaining the
information and keeping it accessible for centuries to come. Format
changes led to huge projects [1] to move video tape archives to
digital formats and make those archives easy to search. I am sure
that similar work will be funded when it is needed for important
archives of digital information stored in proprietary formats.

Regards,

Leo

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/researchanddevelopment/2011/10/bbc-archive-and-digital-public-space.shtml