David Pogue of the
New York Times had a nice blog post on
disappearing file and media formats (new window).
I found this part most interesting:
But it sure is depressing to realize that, even with all the technology in the world, we still have no truly permanent storage format for our data, audio and video. Think about it: punch cards, tape drives, music cassettes, Zip disks, floppies–how long does a typical recording format last before society abandons it? Usually less than ten years.
It is very depressing. As we have more and more of our lives in the digital format, we stand more and more of a chance of getting stuck with files we can't access.
