Digital Dark Age

The Digital Dark Age is a term used to describe a possible future situation where it will be difficult or impossible to read historical documents, because they have been stored in an obsolete digital format. This could cause the period around the turn of the 21st century, when viewed from the future, to be comparable to the Dark Ages in the sense that there will be a relative lack of written record. The term was introduced in 1998 at the Time and Bits conferencecite book
last = MacLean
editor-last = MacLean
editor-first = Margaret
editor2-last = Davis
editor2-first = Ben
authorlink =
title = Time and Bits, Managing Digital Continuity
publisher = Getty
series =
year = 1999
doi =
isbn = 978-0-89236-583-8] cite journal
title = Escaping The Digital Dark Age
last = Brand
first = Stewart
authorlink = Stewart Brand
journal = Library Journal
volume = 124
pages = 46-49
date = June 2003] , which was co-sponsered by the Long Now Foundation and the Getty Conservation Institute.

The problem is not limited to text documents, but applies equally to photos, video, audio and other kinds of electronic documents. The concern leading to the use of the term is that documents are stored on physical media which require special hardware in order to be read and that this hardware will not be available in a few decades from the time the document was created. An example is that already today the necessary disk drive to read a 5¼-inch floppy disk is not readily available. The digital Dark Age also applies to the problems which arise due to obsolete file formats. In this case it is the lack of the necessary software which causes problems when desiring to retrieve stored documents. One example is that a compressed document saved in the LZH format popular in the 1980s cannot be read by software typically installed on modern PCs.

References

See also

* Digital obsolescence
* Digital preservation
* Dark Ages
* Electronic document

External links

*
* [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/21/tech/main537308.shtml Coming Soon A Digital Dark Age - CBS News]
* [http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,871091,00.html How huge quantities of data are rapidly falling into a black hole - Guardian Unlimited]
* [http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/the-digital-dark-age/2005/09/22/1126982184206.html The digital Dark Age - The Sydney Morning Herald]
* [http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla63/63kuny1.pdf A Digital Dark Ages? Challenges in the Preservation of Electronic Information (PDF)]