I have an entirely contrary point of view to the previous author.

He said in part:

> For now, there is only one sure answer for critical
> knowledge, and it's almost antithetical to how we work:
> maintain this information in analog form. While we sort all
> this out, at least we'll know that knowledge workers of the
> future will not have to depend on digital system upgrades (or
> retrogrades) and transitions that took place in the
> intervening years since the information was created, as the
> ability to view and retrieve such information will always
available.
>
> Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex. He can
> be reached at jspira@...

If someone had copied the analog Apollo tapes to digital format,
we would be able to view them today.

It is far easier to preserve and transform digitally-coded
content than analog, because the latter always requires
specialized equipment. And analog data is approximate data, not
specific data. Digital data, once recorded, is lossless across
infinite generations of copying.

It is possible to create a one-way hash (such as SHA-256) of any
digital file, store it with the file, and prove the file is both
authentic and unchanged. With time stamping, it is possible to
prove that a digital document existed on and has not changed
since a particular date, and has not changed since that date - a
feat which is impossible with any analog recording or paper or
other media version of a document.

Arguments against digital files seem to all be about media -
which is a red herring. Media doesn't matter. Digital documents
are so cheap to store and copy, that the best preservation of
files is not to archive them, in the sense of moving them online,
but to preserve them in significantly redundant form in online
networks.

There are still Saturn-V moon boosters lying around - literally,
visit Cape Canaveral and see one. But there is a reason they
threw away the engineering drawings - they are obsolete.

The whole notion of launching space vehicles on top of missiles
is horrendously wasteful and dangerous. Part of the reason it was
done that way is because we didn't have the computing power to
calculate orbit insertions in real-time 40 years ago. Now the
sensible thing to do is piggyback the space vehicle on either an
airplane or a balloon, and launch it from above most of the
atmosphere instead of from the very bottom of it.

"I guess we just better keep using microfilm for the time being"
is delusional.

On the space shuttle, there are three of every critical system,
and the systems 'vote' to decide whether one of the three is out
of whack.

Something similar could be done for important archives. Keep
five, ten, fifty, or five hundred copies of important files in
geographically dispersed locations. Allow those who are inclined
to make offline copies also. SHA-256 all files, and keep
redundant, time-stamped registries of the SHA-256 thumbprints.

While early experimentation with digital formats generated some
offbeat versions that are not popular today, things have settled
down. And digital data doesn't degrade, and it is possible with
sufficient interest, to transform the data.

I can still read floppies from 1983, although I have long since
moved most of the information that is valuable online in
redundant copies, and I've copied it to gold cds and DVDs.

> Retaining knowledge isn't always at the forefront of a
> manager's list of priorities; it has little short-term
> payback and can be expensive, labor-intensive, and there is
> no guarantee that a company won't experience a loss of
> information over time.

I've actually been working on something that relates to this. I
own a small document management software company, and I was
frustrated with the fact that while we were designing and
delivering software that is being used to archived hundreds of
thousands of documents every day, I couldn't find that email I
need from last week, the web page that I visited yesterday, or
the white paper a friend sent me.

What I needed was an external hard drive for my brain.

So I made a little front end for my document archive software
that runs in the background in Windows XP. It Watches a special
folder it creates (My Documents/Save to LaserVault) And it also
creates a special purpose, Print to Archive PDF printer.

So when I have something I want to put in the archive, such as a
web page I am visiting, a Word doc, a spreadsheet, or whatever, I
can print to the archive, or 'Save As' to the special folder, and
the document will be instantly uploaded over the web to the
document server. Whenever you print to or save to the archive,
the software pops up a folder selection window, then immediately
browsers to the folder and lets you add fields (metadata) for
later searching. It also does a full-text extract of office
documents, PDF files, and anything that an iFilter exist for.

You can try it out at http://lvserver.laservault.com/pkb

The example given has a personal knowledgebase folder (only you
can search for your documents and view them) and a shared
knowledgebase (anything uploaded is visible to everyone).

Brad Jensen