Content creators have always needed some means for getting their message or ideas out to content consumers. The simplest mechanism has always been the human voice distributing its message to the human ear.  Following closely from this has been the handwritten word to the human eye.  In both cases no intervening technology is necessarily required to create or receive the content.  Certain technological devices like the bullhorn for voice or the pen/pencil on paper for the written word have augmented the distribution function.  In both of these cases the technological enhancement has remained in the hands of the content creator.  The content consumer has only had to be able to hear or see (and comprehend mentally) the messages to receive them.

The invention of the printing press and movable type in the mid-1400’s greatly expanded the ability of content creator’s to get their message out to many more content consumers, both in an immediate sense and over extended periods of time (e.g. archived books, letters, etc). Technology still resides in this case solely with the content creator.  Once the content creator has accessed the printing press and created the content no further technological processing is required on the part of the content consumer to access and comprehend the message.  If all power was lost, if all artificial light became non-existent, we could still access the content stored in books and letters.

Audio recordings have seen a tremendous change over the past twenty years.  Morphing from reel-to-reel and cassette tapes to CD’s and most currently digital only (e.g. iTunes) formats. Stored audio didn’t come into our cultures until Edison invented the recorder in the late 1800’s.  This invention established a need, not only on the part of the content creator to store the audio input, but also a need on the part of the content consumer to use a device to decode or ‘playback’ the audio from the medium it is stored upon.  Old wax audio recording tubes or discs are no longer accessible to us today because we lack the playback devices required to ‘hear’ the works.  These early storage devices up to and including LP records and cassette tapes worked on ‘analog’ principles from which a future intelligence could possible glean there is a message to obtain.  Today’s CD’s and DVD’s store information in proprietary formats as combinations of  0’s and 1’s that would be difficult, if not impossible for a future generation to recognize, ‘decode’ and interpret.  In addition, these newest media still fall prey to degradation issues.  After 50 years there may longer be any message left.  An LP record may hold up for many decades with its physically etched ridges and valleys of analog audio content.  Not so for CD’s or DVD’s.

In today’s digital world content consumers require almost as much technology as content creators in order to receive and comprehend the content.  This puts the communications system at risk if any parts fail.  The chain can be broken and all access to content can easily be lost.  Power outages, changes in media formats (e.g. LP records, floppy disks, CD’s, DVD’s, etc), and electronic security mechanisms can inhibit or bar our future access to digital content.

What are we doing to protect our society’s intellectual legacies from being lost through technological obsolescence or power failure?