Vint Cerf , an Internet evangelist and Vice president at Google has warned that the 21st century could become an “information black hole” to future generations.
According to a report by The Independent, Cerf said, “Software programs, computer operating systems and hardware are changing so fast that documents, pictures, spreadsheets, emails and other digital “objects” are becoming unreadable within a few years of being created.”
Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science that we may also be wrong at digitizing the photos and expecting them to last longer.
“In 1,000 or 3,000 years in the future we have to ask ourselves how are we to preserve all the bits [binary digits] that we need in order to correctly interpret the digital objects that we create,” he further added. In case, we don’t find a solution then the 21st century will become an information black hole, and future centuries will keep wondering about us.
According to him, software experts have to create some kind of “digital vellum” that is capable of storing the digital records in such a format that is readable for centuries.
