Time & Bits: Managing Digital Continuity

Rating:
Summary: Paradoxes about digitial preservation
Review: This book presents discussions of long-range thinkers on how data might be maintained through generations. This group offers more paradoxes than solutions such as: 1. The paradox of copying and refreshing digital data while maintaining integrity of the original. 2. The paradox of digitizing for access, but using paper for preservation (to go with a culture that already knows how to preserve paper). When digital data corrupts it corrupts absolutely. 3.The paradox of individual ownership versus access to everything, and what incentive the owner has in preserving data.

As if to further punctuate the problems with digital preservation, the Getty Information Institute which sponsored that workshop no longer exists, many of the mentioned Web sites are gone, and the Time and Bits online forum has ceased to operate (though stored at "long now" web site). Digital preservation can be little better than the cultural organization that supports it.