And at the University of Washington, I've worked on a Multi-Lifespan Information Systems project, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal. This is a real-world application of design principles to support both the bit-integrity and authenticity of digital documents, in this case the audiovisual record of interviews with members of the International Criminal Tribunal - Rwanda formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Last year, I conducted maintenance on the archive and we learned a great deal about the challenges involved - publication pending. :-)

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Len Shustek <len@shustek.com> wrote:

At 03:07 AM 2/13/2015, Brian Randell wrote:

> Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Cerf

We've been beating that drum for a while at the Computer History Museum, starting with a short film for the general public called "Digital Dark Age" that we did in 2011 for our permanent "Revolution" exhibition.
http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208

The inspiration for that film was my discovery that modern versions of Powerpoint won't open presentations created by Powerpoint 1.0, which was released in 1990. In only twenty years, perfectly preserved bits were rendered useless.

-- Len

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Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS
Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School
University of Washington

An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.