Without pointing any particular fingers, it seems to me the copy desk who wrote the original “Email rise could lead to loss of historical records” really fumbled. It seemed also true that the journalist who wrote the story went for the juicy quotes instead of trying to convey what Errol Friedberg was trying to say.

Anybody have a link to the original Nature story?

The archival aspect of digital data is an area which is extremely important, but almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media. One could suppose because all journalists rely on “backgrounder” data from either dead-tree or digital formats those sources are mostly downplayed because they are “old” news.

What’s interesting is that digital media has the ability to provide all of us with much more of a useful and stable method of preserving our history than ever before. That we don’t seem to have the method of doing that very well yet is a result of digital being a very young medium.

Frankly, my email doesn’t nearly approach the level of Friedberg’s and I can safely dump more than 90 percent with few qualms.

On the other hand, I wonder how many of us non-Friedbergs have potentially valuable family photos tucked away in a drawer now fading away. You may not care about those photos, but your children or their children might.

A few years ago there was a mini crisis in Hollywood about the fact that a bunch of old films were self-destructing because of time, poor storage, and the type of film emulsion. What’s sad about what may have been lost is the genesis of some of the roots of motion-picture technology.

Here’s an irony. Some of the oldest books around for historical research were printed on vellum which was originally a tanned skin of a calf or lamb. The technology of how they made that media to last so long is now mostly speculation. There are other examples of “old” tech which have become lost.

Sorry for the rant,
Perry