Re: Preservation of digital information

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Peter Graham, RUL
Mon, 2 Mar 98 15:11:50 EST


>At 10:50 AM -0800 3/2/98, Eric Doehne wrote:
>>More fodder for our discussion in todays NY Times business section:
>>March 2, 1998, Unlocking the Secrets of the Digital Archive Left by
>>East Germany, by Gerd Meissner
>>
>>Describes the difficulty of reading these archives and their
>>historical importance. This is a good test case, but requires solving
>>multiple hard problems.
>
>Another good German test case was brought up by Jaron Lanier at the Time &
>Bits conference---Virtual Berlin. It is a rich virtual reality of Berlin,
>including old and new buildings, detailed traffic lore, etc. Highly
>valued, highly used. It has been kludge-migrated for nearly a decade, but
>it is so complexly imbedded in an array of evanescent technologies, its
>future seems utterly doomed. Historically it is a terrible loss-to-come,
>with apparently nothing that can be done to stave off its fate.
>
>
>

From: Peter Graham, Rutgers University Libraries

The following seems apposite at this point--a not uncommon view, expressed by
a character in Tom Stoppard's play of a view years ago, *Arcadia*:

***********************************************************************

Thomasina: [The great library of Alexandria was burned....] All the lost
plays of the Athenians....How can we sleep for grief?

Septimus [hodge]: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven
from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve
for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson
book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like
travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will
be picked up by those behind. ... The missing plays of Sophocles will turn
up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures
for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries
glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my
lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of
Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

***********************************************************************
--pg

NEW ZIP: Peter Graham Rutgers University Libraries
169 College Ave., New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1163
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  • Reply: Stewart Brand: "Re: Preservation of digital information"
  • Reply: Stewart Brand: "Re: Preservation of digital information"