The Revolution Should Not Be Digitized--Put It on Microfilm Instead

The siren song of digitization is one we are hardly even trying to resist. E-books are outselling hardcovers on Amazon, the Beatles sold over 2 million songs on iTunes in a week, and you can read 350-year-old scientific papers online. But why should we fight it? Digital media is cheap, it's easy, and it's clutter free. But like all of the siren's attempted seductions, digitization is an attractive tune with a twist. The convenience that digital storage offers now will more than likely be made up for in future headaches. So a pair of researchers recommend that we bring some analog back into our lives. Steffen Schielke and Andreas Rauber are neither picky audiophiles nor hoodie-clad hipsters, they're computer scientists, and they are worried about the long-term storage of all this data we're collecting. Magnetic tape, floppy disks, CDs and DVDs have all more-or-less come and gone in the last 80 years. While trying to find the equipment and expertise to actually use the different formats can be a burden, there are also issues with software, say Schielke and Rauber, the authors of a new study on the future of data archiving published in the International Journal of Electronic Governance. You may have even experienced this before. As Brien Posey recalls on the TechRepublic blog: