This week we move on from issues of copyright to reading that is a little less extensive and headache inducing as we start to focus the majority of our class on putting together our digital tours. The main issue of our weeks readings was what in this case is being called the digital dark age. Although this is the first time I have heard this issue being describes as a potential dark age for the digital world.
The issue is that unlike paper the digital medium is rapidly evolving. A great example of this can be found on Washington's Digital Archives website. In the mid-90s the at the time governor of Washington State, Mike Lowry set up a website that (although perhaps not the most high tech when it was set up), originally took up a fair amount of memory on any hard drive. That website is now preserved within a small part of the digital archives database with most of its original functions intact.
As the many examples in our readings have shown this vast storage capacity makes it possible to preserve a record series of an entire state and make it relatively accessible to the general public (I say relatively in reference to the fact that some of these databases could improve their search engine and usability). http://www.digitalarchives.state.pa.us/
The drawback to this rapid evolution is that both the software used to create digital records online and the portable storage mediums (CD, USB drive, etc) are rapidly evolving. In the course of this rapid evolution not a lot has been done to accommodate older technology. Computers manufacturers no longer offer disk drives for ¾ inch or floppy disks and Microsoft does not allow users to open a file in Microsoft Office 2007 that was created with Microsoft Office 2000. Files that were created and/or stored within these older mediums are often irretrievable. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081027174646.htm
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| Early Tape Drive |
However what makes this even more problematic is the fact that companies benefit from the use of exclusive digital mediums. Creating software that is unreadable to a competing program ensures that people will use software packages used by the same company that makes a certain operating system. Also updating a software package every few years while only giving a limited period for files created in an older version of the same software to remain compatible, makes it so consumers have to buy new and increasingly expensive software packages every few years. I suspect that not wanting to be too political the authors of the “Digital Dark Age” and “Digital Preservation” articles do not mention how problematic this potentially is in a society where large companies are given a lot of political power. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081027174646.htm http://www.digitalpreservationeurope.eu/what-is-digital-preservation/
The alternative pushed in this weeks readings is the use of open software to counteract the problem that is referred to as the Digital Dark Age. Open software has become very popular in the home computer market. Not only are programs like OpenOffice and VLC Media Player adaptable to many different media formats, but they are also free. However open software has not made as much head way in the professional world, which I suspect has something to do with the influence of big business in the development of digital archives. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/jobs/08starts.html
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| Open Office Main Page |
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