Depending On Digital
By Jez Strickley
Digital data storage is the background radiation of modern life,
infiltrating the supermarket checkout till and high street bank just as easily
as the doctor’s surgery and secretary’s office.From financial accounts and students’ essays to music downloads and
mobile phones, the versatility of the digital world is seemingly limitless.Its greatest development to date, perhaps, is
that Wunderkind of the modern age,
the Internet, an information tool which, in every likelihood, is merely the
first course on the digital menu.All of
which begs the question: Is this increasing dependence on all things digital
the dawn of a brave new world, replete with bite-size libraries and instant
messaging, or simply a breathtakingly ignorant case of putting all our eggs in
one and the same basket?
The rise of the digital age is arguably the single biggest leap in data
storage technology of modern times.Sound and vision are now recordable as so many bits and bytes in an
electronic domain which goes above and beyond the cogs and wheels of industrial
know how.This meta-world of information
transactions leaves the average citizen in a backwash of technical ignorance,
confined to an array of user friendly interfaces which, by and large, only broaden
the vast gulf between the consumer and the principles by which their flat
screen television and wireless handset quietly function.In short, it is a world outside the ken of
the common user.What is more, the invisible
interplay of wavelengths and frequencies, ones and zeroes which fashions codes
of data into a favourite rock track or literary masterpiece, is now the primary
thoroughfare of information handling.
The development of digital data stands upon the shoulders of two unsung
giants of information technology: paper and the printing press.In the course of daily life these twin
innovations in information storage and distribution are consummately sidelined,
and almost wholly ignored as commonplace inventions of bygone times.In point of fact they represent full scale
revolutions insofar as record keeping is concerned, forging and crafting the
very fundaments upon which the digital age now rests its increasingly weighty
and arguably precarious cargo.
Whatever our attachments to the printed page and its understated
importance, the arrival of its digital progeny has brought with it a volume and
convenience of information keeping as yet unrivalled – and virtually impossible
to resist.Vast reams of data can now be
readily condensed and held in toto in
a piece of plastic small enough to fit on a key ring.It has opened up windows of debate of global
proportions, creating virtual communities of users whose lives echo with the
advantages of digital.But this is precisely
where the problem at the heart of this electronic paradise lies.For it is the sheer range and capacity of this
facility which presents us with its most damning defect.In brief, digital storage is in no way
watertight, and if society continues to consign the accumulated knowledge of
the age to the leaky vessels of the digital world, there is the very real
possibility that innumerable facts and figures, details and particulars could
be lost forever, creating an historical void into which modern life will be
flung.
Random file corruptions, software viruses and hardware failures may be
routine enough to be the staple ingredients of computer usage, but what of a less
immediately noticeable issue such as program compatibility?If an important file, for example, is stored
in one format, and that format becomes obsolete, there is the danger that
unless the problem is addressed quickly, the data stored in the outmoded format
will be lost.The matter of
compatibility may not sound like a priority problem, but with the seemingly relentless
upgrading of programs and operating systems it presents an information loss time
bomb steadily ticking towards zero.
In the December 2006 edition of Popular
Mechanics (see www.popularmechanics.com) Brad
Reagan tackles this very quandary, amongst other topics, in his article ‘The
Digital Ice Age’.In the course of his
exploration Reagan sets out a further, equally important matter.He points out that “Personal accounts from
the Civil War can still be read today because people took pains to save
letters, but how many of the millions of e-mails sent home by U.S. servicemen
and servicewomen from the front lines in Iraq will be accessible a century from
now?”Reagan’s comment is critical. The academic’s weighty tome is all very well
and good, but its body of research depends upon personal testimonies, and it is
this which gives history its grit – a grit which could be lost to the vagaries
of digital data storage if the proper measures are not taken.
In the midst of unpacking the problem of our digital reliance Reagan goes
on to state that it is an issue which is “…immediately apparent and invisible
to the average citizen.”Reagan’s second
observation is the most troubling.How
mindful, for instance, is the average user in the business of backing-up their
non-essential files, such as old letters, e-mails and other personal
details?In fact, the problem of missing
or inaccessible data is barely acknowledged beyond the relatively trivial loss
of an e-mail or the failure to download a file.It is unsurprising, therefore, that the potentially yawning chasm opening
up in tomorrow’s history books does not even merit a blip on their digital
radar.
The loss of personal histories may prove less immediately significant to
the focus of modern life, but there are other far more pressing concerns to be
faced.The loss of crucial medical data,
for instance, could endanger scores of lives; the corruption of police records
or intelligence information could expose the public to unchecked criminality.Even more seriously, an error in the hardware
of a nuclear arsenal could threaten a global danger not witnessed since the
darkest days of the Cold War.And, if this
sounds like nothing more than shoddy scaremongering, just bear in mind the
point that with more and more information being electronically stored, and
fewer and fewer hard copies being made, all our information eggs are well and
truly being packaged up in the same basket – and we are all aware of the lesson
of that particular proverb.
Digital technology represents a growing raft of data, available across a
gamut of media and accessible at the press of a button.It has its drawbacks, but these are not about
to lead to its abandonment.It is
important, therefore, that the perils of cashing in on a single mode of
information storage are thoroughly recognised and addressed.Technology may give us the solution in terms
of cleaning up viruses and dealing with compatibility problems, but even these
answers still leave us with a single basket of information.What is needed, instead, is a multiple basket
approach, in which common sense backing-up of files and documents in a range of
formats becomes a commonplace routine.For
the individual user, external hard drives capable of storing terabytes of data
are readily available, as are online storage facilities.Regularly burning important details onto CD
and keeping multiple file copies on separate USB drives are further common
sense insurance policies against data loss.All of which might sound needlessly irksome and time consuming, but the
extra seconds spent copying a valuable document will be priceless should the
original version ever become corrupted or, to use a technical term, simply
vanish.
Each of the above remedies is supported by digital technology, and so
each of our auxiliary information baskets is, in its turn, ultimately prone to
the very problems it seeks to avoid.To
move beyond electronic data storage and establish a non-digital information
basket, free of the issues plaguing digital storage, means going back to
basics.And as Brad Reagan concludes,
“…a printed copy is sometimes the best form of backup.”Indeed, in the final run of things it is the
printed page which offers us a way out of our digital dependence, however
cumbersome and space-consuming hard copies can be.All of which, rather ironically, returns us
to the twin forebears of the digital world and to an approach to information
keeping that, despite its own disadvantages, provides us with largely
hassle-free information retrieval and a mode of data stockpiling which is
immune to the software virus, hardware issues and compatibility headaches of its
digital offspring.In fact, the humble
printed page has a great deal to be said for it, so let us try and make sure that
at least one of our baskets is paper-based.