When manufactured diamond becomes cheap enough, I think it will be
used as a storage medium. Diamond will last virtually forever, if kept
correctly. Then we can have those spinning disks that were used in the
1960 film version of HG Well's Time Machine. It may not be a jet-pack
or moon-base, but it will do for now.
Media that lasts for forever and a reproduction method that side-steps
decoding obsolesence won't be welcomed by manufacturers : ( It'll be
built though, as people like the British Museum, the DOD et al will
want it.
Roger
> Tape-life is usually 10-60 years, encoding obsolescence is a greater
> threat according to
> http://www.amianet.org/publication/resources/guidelines/videofacts/tapelife.html
> Some of the earlier German Magnetophone tapes from the war are still
> playable. Some enterprise systems still use tape as back-up. Modern
> day media such as CDs, can last up to 50 years. Unless you want to
> engrave on stone, paper looks to be the longer-term preservation agent
> of choice. Just pick a good-quality washi - known to last for a 1000
> years - and you'll still be read into the far future. If you want to
> be heard into the future, I'd emboss a series of encoded dots onto the
> washi, along with their encoding algorithm, so that it could be
> translated into sound. The alternate stratagey is to store your
> content in as many forms as you can and hope some of it survives.
--
http://www.badstep.net/
Suspicion breeds confidence
|