Data Preservation in the Digital Age

David Fiander writes \”The folks over at slashdot are getting all excited about a a story about a new paper out of UMich that talks about the problems of data preservation in the digital age. As if it\’s a new problem, and not just a seriously exacerbated one \”

From Slashdot\”Recently there was an Ask Slashdot about the the problem of preserving digital material. The basic idea was that we are creating a massive wealth of digital information, but have no clear plan for preserving it. What happens to all of those poems I write when I try to access them for my grandkids? What about the pictures of my kids I took with that digital camera? Can I still get to them in time to embarrass them in the future?