[xkcd 1683] Digital Data

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But converting from a format to another is a lossy process. It's best to just keep whatever original format you have, unless you are creating the images yourself.

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It's hard to imagine how much data is lost on old notepads, journals, even personal voice recordings.

Ready! Player 31

Trying not to spoil it but this is a plot point in a relatively famous, relatively recent sci-fi book, where the characters need to record a warning that lasts for millennia. They end up carving it into the rock of Pluto since all other data mediums would fail over that timespan.

noughtnaut

I do not know of this movie, but you're description reminded me of the most excellent read Deep Time, by Gregory Benford. Didn't consider other planets though, as this is actually a non-fiction work.

Krik

Storing data for decades or even centuries is a difficult thing. But the problem isn't the storage it's the data format!

Who knows if a person 300 years from now has a program that can open .png or .jpg? Or the dreaded .doc and .xls that even Microsoft has problems with today.
This poor future fellow probably won't have the capatibilities and might need a few years or decades to develop a reader app.

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That sounds like a great book, if only I new what it was called.

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That seems to imply everything you're willing to pay for would still be accessible. That's just not the case I think. Things dissappear full stop, also if you do want to pay for it.

A lot of non super popular, not very internationally known media eventually disappears into non-accessible copies in private collections: hard drives, non public accessible computers etc and at the same time becomes nearly impossible to purchase or otherwise retrieve online. For example public broadcasters in Europe: they don't want to put in the money and effort to preserve their entire archives, they don't make everything from the past accessible, things do get lost in their archives (sometimes as a conscious choice) and at the same time it is illegal for private people to archive it... until it is too late. For example lots and lots of radio plays are probably already lost forever.

Ready! Player 31

Three Body Problem

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Needs more 9gag logos

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You mean we should consider recording information on silicon?

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That feel when you find ancient media circa early 2000s and it's all pixelated to hell on newer displays. And then you see they're from long-dead sites like the OG failboat and icanhazcheeseburger etc. You saved them in full-fat png for some reason but it doesn't matter. Still looks like shit. And they're 10 years older than your dog who is wobbling up to you this morning. Her face is greying. Stiff and old. Just like you. Time's a bitch.

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Ah nice. That's already on my list. I did see the Netflix series.

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living DNA along with better error correction mechanisms so it doesn't mutate

Isn't DNA, like, famous for its mutations?

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.txt ftw

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I want my journal to die with me. It's got a lot of painfully honest stuff that could hurt the people I love.

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Perfection. But we could deep fry it a bit.

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I really hope the Internet Archive survive their lawsuits. They're important not just for archival of websites (the Wayback Machine) but also of books, audio recordings, etc. There's a large amount of old content that's only archived at the Internet Archive.

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You could archive a description of the file format alongside the files. Maybe a pseudocode implementation too, or actual code (although who knows which programming languages will exist 300 years from now).

Or the dreaded .doc and .xls that even Microsoft has problems with today.

The US Library of Congress recommends archiving data in SQLite databases, since it's a simple, well-documented format, SQLite is public domain, and SQLite devs have promised to support it for a long time and retain backwards compatibility indefinitely.

CSV and TSV are okay too of course, but it's often much easier to deal with large datasets if they're in an actual database format.