Re: Do Burned CDs Have a Short Life Span?

[Paul Pehrson <paulpehrson -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I was thinking about what you two said here and I wondered where we
would be if we couldn't "read" the US Constitution or Declaration of
Independence (or, for our non-US list members, any similar document
written around 200 years ago). Despite all our technical advances in
the last 200 years, we can still access the "data" our forefathers
left for us.

Then I realized that language evolves like (albeit slower than)
technology. When I try to read early English literature, it is almost
so inaccessible it makes me want to quit trying. (Not to mention that
their Ss look like Fs...)

In short, we are always evolving. Today we employ professionals whose
job it is to access and understand the records left behind from
thousands of years ago. In 100 years, we'll probably still be
employing professionals whose job it is to access the the data stored
on a 5-inch floppy disc, or an ancient compact-disc (or even a
blue-ray DVD).

It seems to me that its always been this way. Technology has just
shortened the gap between us and the data we have a hard time
accessing.

Paul Pehrson
Midvale, UT


On 1/12/06, Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com> wrote:
> Rick Stone wrote:
>
> > ...it's my opinion that if we were truly advancing, whatever we
> > devised would no longer render the former technology of the day
> > obsolete. Instead, the newer format or version would be inclusive of
> > the former medium.
>
> Apple tried to do that for years and finally figured out that making
> everything backward compatible actually holds back progress.
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