Fending Off Digital Decay, Bit by Bit (aka Saving Salman)

  So as I sat reading this interesting article, my eyes kept trailing across my cluttered room to my over-stuffed book case where my copy of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses sat (or more accurately where it was wedged). I kept thinking of the tragedy that could have been had that misunderstood Rushdie book been lost forever. At one time it was indeed a near possibility, and Rushdie himself was very nearly lost with it. Oh well, that's another literary lesson. What alarmed me about this article was the realization that not all things saved by technology are forever. I don't know why this notion didn't strike me sooner, it seems rather obvious in retrospect that if technology should be constantly moving forward to the bigger and better, that the lesser and the weaker would be lost as it became outdated. Indeed as this article reveals, there is information and literary works being lost through the cracks as technology evolves, and that's not just in books alone. Even worse, as the article highlights, the people with the skills to revive and save such things as floppy disks, older PCs, and word processors are becoming fewer and fewer. So what's the answer then? Personally, I would say hit the panic button and salvage everything to more current databases and systems ASAP. If we've learned anything from this course thus far it's that technology stops for no man, or no man's work.