07-30-2003, 02:50 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 739
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A Digital Dark Age - Are We in Danger of Losing History?
Even though I'm not a programmer, I found this article fascinating. We're still living in the early days of computing (or at least, we're not very far from those origins), and we risk losing a lot of computing history.
"With new programs replacing old and no major company or institution playing the central role of source-code archivist, the amount of software history currently circling the memory hole is scarily large. And even if there were a central institution, recent changes to the copyright code have made the transfer of source code from old media to new forms of storage a dicey prospect, legally. Add it all up, and you have the ideal makings for what some are already calling the 'digital dark age.' For every modern offshoot of DOS/Windows, Unix and Macintosh OS evolving with the marketplace, a dozen ghost programs lurk inside yellowed engineering pads, punch-card stacks and slowly degaussing magnetic memories."
This reminds me of the early days of film. Thousands of historically valuable films from the 1890s to the 1920s have been lost forever, simply because film pioneers didn't realize their value. The celluloid the films were stored on was melted down and recycled to make nail polish, among other things. Now we're looking at preserving the origins of another new technology, and finding there isn't yet any organized way of storing, organizing, and analyzing this important piece of history.
(Warning - you'll have to click through an ad to read the article.)
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07-30-2003, 03:01 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 153
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Nothing last forever you know. It's just entropy at work.
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07-30-2003, 03:30 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 298
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Diamonds are forever.
*rimshot* Thanks folks! I'll be in town all week, try the veal, and don't forget to tip your waiters and waitresses!
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07-30-2003, 04:09 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 713
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Likewise, thousands of Mathew Brady's American Civil War photographs were lost forever when the glass negatives were used to make windows because they were not seen as significant. The images captured on them slowly faded away.
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07-30-2003, 04:30 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 20
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For historians this is actually turning out to be quite a problem. I remember hearing a story just within the last couple of years about historical researchers trying to read computer tapes from the 70s containing files on Pentagon operations in the Vietnam War. The information was all there and intact on the tapes, but they couldn't read the data because no one could find any copies of the original programs used to create the files.
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07-30-2003, 04:32 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,162
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I agree that this is a real problem.
It's the weakness of the data used on computers - it requires tools to read. Tools that are easily lost.
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07-30-2003, 04:55 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 437
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I haven't written much code in years, an .asp now and then maybe, but I used to do a LOT of coding 10-15 years ago and today I have -none- of that code. Thats a lot of personal history lost.
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07-30-2003, 05:04 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Whenever new tools are introduced (in the past few decades at least), there's usually a "cross-over" period: a window of time where people are interested in moving the data over from one data source to another. The issue is being ready to make the jump when the time comes, and most people aren't - they only realize after the fact that they need that data. I'm obsessive about getting old data onto hard drives, then pushing that data along through the decades. I have word processing documents that are pushing 20 years old now...
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07-30-2003, 06:54 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 338
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This is a problem, and in my opinion a serious one.
Over the years I've used so many different technologies (starting with the Apple //e) that I haven't moved data along. Now I want to access the old stuff! OUCH!
We need to support the cause of archiving data and programs that will, whether we like it or not, reflect our history. Legislation would be a good start, to help save source code and to give software a "shelf life" of protection, but it's really up to us, the computer users and data gatherers to figure out how we want to organize and archive information, and then ask programmers to develop tools to help us acheive the result.
Speaking of old programs... does anyone know where I can get a copy of that old Lemonade Stand game for the Apple II? I really want a copy of that, since, in my "Personal History" it was the game that started me into the endless "sim" games like Utopia (Intellivision), Empire, Civilization, all the Sim Cities and on and on...
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07-30-2003, 06:57 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 76
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It will become an issue for the future.. especially since there are very few (and rare) storage mechanisms for storing long term data. I think CDs onyl hold data for 100 years or so... all music will be lost in the year 3000! (Although, Fry from Futurama can play his Sir Mix-A-Lot CD  )
I have personally saved a lot of code I have written over the years (about 10 or so..) and old documents. I even have an image of my old Mac's hard drive and can boot it using a freeware emulator.
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Linear Mode
