Typical digital media is ridiculously short lived compared to everything else humanity has used to store information so far. Five years? Ten? Conserving any digital data is this act of juggling where if you drop the ball it’s gone; you’re constantly replicating and updating. We see the “cloud” as some bulletproof storage but long term it’s up in the air really.
I pulled an antique Apple2][ clone (Franklin 2100) out of storage the other day along with some old floppy disks. I was shocked when it fired right up and could still read my homework project from 1990. So while it is possible to recover old data off of ancient media, it is highly impractical to keep the required hardware in working order forever.
Typical digital media is ridiculously short lived compared to everything else humanity has used to store information so far. Five years? Ten? Conserving any digital data is this act of juggling where if you drop the ball it’s gone; you’re constantly replicating and updating. We see the “cloud” as some bulletproof storage but long term it’s up in the air really.
A+ pun, intended or not
I pulled an antique Apple2][ clone (Franklin 2100) out of storage the other day along with some old floppy disks. I was shocked when it fired right up and could still read my homework project from 1990. So while it is possible to recover old data off of ancient media, it is highly impractical to keep the required hardware in working order forever.