Will Our Media Wear Out?

This was written in October, 1998 but working on my photo gallery reminded me of it.

Ever think about media wearing out? I was cleaning out the basement the other day and I came across a box of 5.25″ diskettes. Lots of them. They date back to 1979 when I had a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III. The diskettes stored 80,000 bytes! Seemed like a lot at the time. Are these diskettes worn out? Well, who knows? Probably not but they are “effectively” worn out because I can’t imagine where I would find a diskette *drive* that could read them. I also found a box of cassette tapes that I had used as data storage on my Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1. Fat chance of retrieving any data from them. How about 3.5″ diskettes? Sure they are ubiquitous today but how about ten years from now? How about 35 mm slides? I don’t know the life of the slides themselves but like the Radio Shack diskettes, I suspect the limiting factor will be the life of the devices with which to retrieve the “data”. There will likely come a day when the slides will be fine but there will be nobody who knows how to repair the carousel or obtain parts for the projector. There are countless other scenarios of similar ilk. (read more)