Internet Pioneer Warns Our Era Could Become The 'Digital Dark Ages' : The Two-Way : NPR: As an example, Cerf points to a book by author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. In Team of Rivals: The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln, Goodwin relied heavily on poring over the physical letters sent between Lincoln and his contemporaries.
As The Telegraph, quoting Cerf, notes: "Such a book might not be possible to write about the people living today ... — the digital content such as emails that an author might need will have 'evaporated because nobody saved it, or it's around but it's not interpretable because it was created by software that's 100 years old'."
Cerf calls the problem the "digital vellum" and says one solution might be to take a digital "snapshot" when an item is stored, recording all the elements needed to reproduce it at a later date. E&T says:
"The snapshot could then be used to reproduce the game, picture file or spread sheet, on a 'modern' computer, perhaps centuries from now.
"'Some people make the argument that the important stuff will be copied and put into new media and so why should we worry,' said Cerf. 'But ... historians will tell you that sometimes documents and transactions images and so on may turn out to have an importance which is not understood for hundreds of years. So failure to preserve them will cause us to lose our perspective.'"
As The Telegraph, quoting Cerf, notes: "Such a book might not be possible to write about the people living today ... — the digital content such as emails that an author might need will have 'evaporated because nobody saved it, or it's around but it's not interpretable because it was created by software that's 100 years old'."
Cerf calls the problem the "digital vellum" and says one solution might be to take a digital "snapshot" when an item is stored, recording all the elements needed to reproduce it at a later date. E&T says:
"The snapshot could then be used to reproduce the game, picture file or spread sheet, on a 'modern' computer, perhaps centuries from now.
"'Some people make the argument that the important stuff will be copied and put into new media and so why should we worry,' said Cerf. 'But ... historians will tell you that sometimes documents and transactions images and so on may turn out to have an importance which is not understood for hundreds of years. So failure to preserve them will cause us to lose our perspective.'"