The Information Professional

BY CLAIRE CONNELLY:

"HISTORIANS will be facing a black hole when it comes to studying the 20th and 21st centuries because much of our digital history is stored on technology that no longer have devices to read them, experts claim.

The information stored on everything from floppy disks to CDs, mobile phones to cameras is at risk of being lost forever, Canadian information security consultant Robert Slade told News Ltd.

"There was a sci-fi story from years ago about how all the knowledge in the universe was put into a huge storage library and then it got lost because nobody knew how to access it," Mr Slade said.

"That is getting to be frightening close to reality."

"It's rather ironic for the 'social media age', n'est ce pas," Mr Slade said. 

Right now, the only solution is to continually transfer information from one device to another as old technologies die and other forms of media take their place.

And don't think cloud storage is a solution. That carries with it all kinds of problems, Mr Slade said.

Cloud service providers can lose, corrupt or make mistakes with data. Even worse, what if the company goes bust?"

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/digital-history-could-be-lost-forever-due-to-changing-devices-says-expert/story-e6frfro0-1226466893848#ixzz25ldicQrI