‘Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good.’ –Nietzsche
NASA has lost data from some of its earliest missions to the moon because the machines used to read the tapes were scrapped and cannot be rebuilt. A wise librarian will wish to keep in working order a few antique computers that can read such ancient technologies as CDs and USB thumb-drives. […]
Conscientious institutions already make copies of some web pages, e-books and other digital material, and shift the data to new hardware every five year. […]
Mistakes 30 years ago mean that much of the early digital age is already a closed book (or no book at all) to historians.
image { Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel }
