> The benefit of print media is its forced-decentralization and stand-alone nature. It can survive for 100+ years on a shelf, and I don't think any digital data format could match that.
MDisc definitely can, if its claims are to be believed. Maybe you can find some specialized tape too?
Hard disks and normal optical disks probably could too, as long as you have a sufficiently large redundant array of them with error-detection on your bookshelf— If it can't last that long, just keep doubling the number of starting drives until it can.
If you want to get fancy, you can try to pay for something around HD-Rosetta, or Microsoft/Hitachi/Soton's printed glass tech.
And then of course if you wanna get simple, you could always stick your digital data into a mountable book/scroll of printed QR codes (or equivalent).
Of course, none of these options are actually deployed at any significant scale.
But I'm not sure you can realistically expect any arbitrary book to last for centuries either. IIRC Modern print media uses acidic paper as a cost-cutting measure, causing it to become brittle and crumble over time…
"[…] causes huge losses in library and archives collection […] 90% of the resources published by the mid-1990s […] have all the features of acidic paper. […] established to care for the heritage of the past, are not able to effectively carry out their mission […] it is not possible to save all the documents from the 19th and 20th centuries […] In recent years, most books have been printed on acid-free paper […]".
>> The benefit of print media is its forced-decentralization and stand-alone nature. It can survive for 100+ years on a shelf, and I don't think any digital data format could match that.
> MDisc definitely can, if its claims are to be believed. Maybe you can find some specialized tape too?
1) I don't think they actually make real M-Discs anymore (the DVDs). There are some M-Disc branded BD-Rs, but I don't think those use any different technology than standard BD-Rs.
2) They're not stand-alone, and by that I mean they need a player or they're unreadable. IMHO, it's unlikely there will be many working DVD/Blu-ray players in 100 years, and very unlikely there will be any players for "some specialized tape."
I've been working a bit with VHS recently, and it's eye opening to see a once ubiquitous format start to drift into unreadability (it's not there yet, but a lot of the specialized equipment needed to do a good job is becoming expensive, hard-to-find, and breaking down).
MDisc definitely can, if its claims are to be believed. Maybe you can find some specialized tape too?
Hard disks and normal optical disks probably could too, as long as you have a sufficiently large redundant array of them with error-detection on your bookshelf— If it can't last that long, just keep doubling the number of starting drives until it can.
If you want to get fancy, you can try to pay for something around HD-Rosetta, or Microsoft/Hitachi/Soton's printed glass tech.
And then of course if you wanna get simple, you could always stick your digital data into a mountable book/scroll of printed QR codes (or equivalent).
Of course, none of these options are actually deployed at any significant scale.
But I'm not sure you can realistically expect any arbitrary book to last for centuries either. IIRC Modern print media uses acidic paper as a cost-cutting measure, causing it to become brittle and crumble over time…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acidic_paper
"[…] causes huge losses in library and archives collection […] 90% of the resources published by the mid-1990s […] have all the features of acidic paper. […] established to care for the heritage of the past, are not able to effectively carry out their mission […] it is not possible to save all the documents from the 19th and 20th centuries […] In recent years, most books have been printed on acid-free paper […]".