THE IRONY of Cerf’s concern is that the digital age is anything but dark. We are in the era of big data, exploding with exponentially more bits and bytes each year. By one back-of the-envelope estimate, the number of digital photos we snap in two minutes exceeds all the photographs taken during the entire 19th century. Faster computing speeds; sensors on our phones, cars, and transit systems; and falling costs of technologies to sequence genomes and launch satellites contribute to the data deluge. We’re entering the era of the “Internet of Things,” in which virtually any object or organism on the planet could one day collect and transmit data.
From The race to preserve disappearing data – Ideas – The Boston Globe
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