 Number 214 - March 2001 |
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| Will Magnetic Media Replace Paper? | ||
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by Bob Thomson reprinted from the Jan 1992 & Nov 1994 TOGGLE The following article was resurrected from the November 1994 issue of the TOGGLE as a prelude to the article immediately following it. We had already re-run it once from January 1992 issue with the header "Paper?". | ||
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We hear from time to time
about the paperless office of the future. Yes. the computer and
telecommunications may, ultimately, have a greater effect on the timber
industry than the spotted owl. However...
The other day I saw a TV program--CBC's "The Nature of Things" with David Suzuki--about the disintegration of paper in the books in our major libraries. Because of the acid content of the paper itself, caused by an additive introduced to papermaking in the 17th century, paper is actually consuming itself over time. As a result many great books are being irretrievably lost. So not only is there a likelihood, with the increased use of computers and telecommunications, that the amount of paper in daily use in offices will decrease, but a means for long term storage of data other than paper must be found. The TV program suggested that we needn't worry about losing stored data in the future because we have it safely stored on disk and tape. Oh yeah? Do you believe that? Personally, I think that is pretty naive. |
We have already, in our
own little user group, had discussions about the decay of the image on a
magnetic disk over time, and how constant refreshing of data is a good
idea, if not essential, to maintain the integrity of data. Maybe storage
using the laser-CD technology is a tad better. But to expect to come
back in three or four hundred years and crank up the old PC and read the
data seems to me to be unlikely to be successful, even if the PC could
still function, or even if then current "PC's" could still read, let
alone interpret, the data.
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Number 214 - March 2001
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