Digital dark age

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The digital dark age is a possible future situation where it will be difficult or impossible to read historical electronic
documents and multimedia, because they have been stored in an obsolete and obscure file format. The name
derives from the term Dark Ages in the sense that there would be a relative lack of written record.
Contents
1 About
2 Examples
3 Prevention
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
About
An early mention of the term was at a conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions (IFLA) in 1997.
[1]
The term was also mentioned in 1998 at the Time and Bits conference,
[2][3]
which
was co-sponsored by the Long Now Foundation and the Getty Conservation Institute.
The problem is not limited to text documents, but applies equally to photos, video, audio and other kinds of
electronic documents. One concern leading to the use of the term is that documents are stored on physical media
which require special hardware in order to be read and that this hardware will not be available in a few decades
from the time the document was created. For example, it is already the case that disk drives capable of reading
5
1

4
inch floppy disks are not readily available.
[4]
The Digital Dark Age also applies to the problems which arise due to obsolete file formats. In such a case, it is the
lack of the necessary software which causes problems when retrieving stored documents. This is especially
problematic when proprietary formats are used, in which case it might be impossible to write appropriate software
to read the file.
Examples
A famous real example is with NASA, whose early space records have suffered from a Dark Age issue more than
once. For over a decade, magnetic tapes from the 1976 Viking Mars landing were unprocessed. When later
analyzed, the data was unreadable as it was in an unknown format and the original programmers had either died or
left NASA. The images were eventually extracted following many months of puzzling through the data and
examining how the recording machines functioned.
[5]
Another example is the BBC Domesday Project in which a survey of the nation was compiled 900 years after the
Domesday Book was published. While the information in the Domesday Book is still accessible today, there were
great fears that the discs of the Domesday Project would become unreadable as computers capable of reading the
format had become rare and drives capable of accessing the discs even rarer. However, the system was emulated
in 2002 using a system called DomesEm by the CAMiLEON project. This allows the information on the discs to be
accessed on modern computers.
[6]
Encrypted data may also prove to be an issue, as the process needed to decode the data can increase
complexity.
[7]
Historically, encrypted data is quite rare, but even the very simple means available throughout history
have provided many examples of documents that can only be read with great effort. For example, it took the
capacity of a distributed computing project to break the mechanically generated code of a single brief World War
II submarine tactical message.
[8]
Modern encryption is being used in many more documents and media due to
publishers wanting the promised protections of DRM.
Prevention
As more records have become stored in digital form, there have been several measures to standardize electronic file
formats so software to consume them is widely available and can be re-implemented on new platforms if necessary.
PDF/A is an open standard based on Adobe Systems PDF format.
[9]
It has been widely adopted by governments
and archives around the world
[citation needed]
.
In 2007, Microsoft created a partnership with the UK's National Archives to prevent the digital dark age and
"unlock millions of unreadable stored computer files".
[10][11][12]
The Internet Archive has stated that one of their goals is to prevent the digital dark age.
[13]
One approach is open source, where the source code for reading and writing a file format is open. In 2007 the
chief information officer of the UK's National Archives stated "We welcome open-source software because it
makes our lives easier".
[14]
See also
Apollo 11 missing tapes
Data archaeology
Data corruption
Digital continuity
Digital obsolescence
Digital preservation
References
1. ^ Kuny, Terry (September 1997). "A Digital Dark Ages? Challenges in the Preservation of Electronic Information"
(http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla63/63kuny1.pdf) (PDF). 63RD IFLA (International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions) Council and General Conference. Archived
(http://web.archive.org/web/20080509145855/http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla63/63kuny1.pdf) from the original on 9
May 2008. Retrieved 7 November 2011.
2. ^ MacLean (1999). MacLean, Margaret & Davis, Ben, ed. Time and Bits, Managing Digital Continuity. Getty.
ISBN 978-0-89236-583-8.
3. ^ Brand, Stewart (1 February 1999). "Escaping The Digital Dark Age"
(http://web.archive.org/web/20050923024519/http://library.colstate.edu/libr1105/kramer/cadeau/deadm2.html).
Library Journal 124 (2): 4649. ISSN 0363-0277 (//www.worldcat.org/issn/0363-0277). Archived from the
original (http://library.colstate.edu/libr1105/kramer/cadeau/deadm2.html) on 23 September 2005.
4. ^ Enticknap, Leo (21 March 2013). "The Problems With Digital Data Storage"
(http://web.archive.org/web/20130604021204/http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interv
iew/1000160/). The Naked Scientists. Archived from the original
(http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1000160/) on 4 June 2013. Retrieved 25
March 2013.
5. ^ Blakeslee, Sandra (20 March 1990). "Lost on Earth: Wealth of Data Found in Space"
(http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/20/science/lost-on-earth-wealth-of-data-found-in-space.html). New York
Times. Archived (http://web.archive.org/web/20121109203504/http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/20/science/lost-
on-earth-wealth-of-data-found-in-space.html) from the original on 9 November 2012. Retrieved 7 July 2013.
6. ^ McKie, Robin; Thorpe, Vanessa (3 March 2002). "Digital Domesday Book lasts 15 years not 1000"
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning). The Observer. Archived
(http://web.archive.org/web/20130120125028/http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning)
from the original on 20 January 2013.
7. ^ Digital Preservation Coalition (2012). "Media and Formats - Compression and Encryption"
(http://www.dpconline.org/advice/preservationhandbook/media-and-formats/compression-and-encryption). Digital
Preservation Handbook. Archived
(http://web.archive.org/web/20120729192407/http://dpconline.org/advice/preservationhandbook/media-and-
formats/compression-and-encryption) from the original on 29 July 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
8. ^ Wearden, Graeme (27 February 2006). "Distributed computing cracks Enigma code"
(http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6043572.html?part=rss). CNET News. Archived
(http://www.webcitation.org/5v6Esfshc) from the original on December 19, 2010.
9. ^ "Adobe Acrobat Engineering:PDF Standards" (http://acroeng.adobe.com/wp/?page_id=303). Adobe. March 12,
2013. Archived (http://web.archive.org/web/20130707172612/http://acroeng.adobe.com/wp/?page_id=303) from
the original on July 7, 2013. Retrieved 7 July 2013.
10. ^ Kennedy, Maev (4 July 2007). "National Archive project to avert digital dark age"
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/04/news.uknews). News:Technology (The Guardian). Archived
(http://web.archive.org/web/20100717121702/http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/04/news.uknews)
from the original on 17 July 2010. Retrieved 7 October 2009.
11. ^ Ferguson, Tim (5 July 2007). "Microsoft Helps Archives Save the Past"
(http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2007/gb2007075_877434.htm). Technology. Business Week.
Archived
(http://web.archive.org/web/20070710062846/http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2007/gb2007075
_877434.htm?) from the original on 10 July 2007. Retrieved 7 October 2009.
12. ^ Colvile, Robert (5 July 2007). "How to stave off a digital 'dark age' "
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3353826/How-to-stave-off-a-digital-dark-age.html). Telegraph. Archived
(http://web.archive.org/web/20120424121440/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3353826/How-to-stave-off-
a-digital-dark-age.html) from the original on 24 April 2012. Retrieved 7 October 2009.
13. ^ "About the Internet Archive" (http://archive.org/about/). Archived (http://www.webcitation.org/6K8VPuyRy)
from the original on 5 October 2013. Retrieved 5 October 2013.
14. ^ Donoghue, Andrew (19 July 2007). "Defending against the digital dark age"
(http://web.archive.org/web/20121023075347/http://www.zdnet.com/defending-against-the-digital-dark-age-
3039288099/). ZDNet. Archived from the original (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-
strategy/2007/07/19/defending-against-the-digital-dark-age-39288099/) on 23 October 2012.
External links
Digital Dark Ages article at LISWiki, a Library science wiki
Coming Soon A Digital Dark Age - CBS News
(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/21/tech/main537308.shtml)
How huge quantities of data are rapidly falling into a black hole - Guardian Unlimited
(http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,871091,00.html)
The digital Dark Age - The Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/the-digital-
dark-age/2005/09/22/1126982184206.html)
A Digital Dark Ages? Challenges in the Preservation of Electronic Information (PDF)
(http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla63/63kuny1.pdf)
Why the Demise of Print Media May Be Bad for Humanity, Tony Bradley, PCWorld, 19 March 2012
(http://www.pcworld.in/news/why-demise-print-media-may-be-bad-humanity-65952012)
Bit Rot - The Economist, 28 April 2012 (http://www.economist.com/node/21553445)
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Categories: Digital libraries Future Lost works
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