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The digital dark age is a lack of historical information in the digital age as a direct result of outdated file formats, software, or hardware that becomes corrupt, scarce, or inaccessible as technologies evolve and data decay. Future generations may find it difficult or impossible to retrieve
electronic document
An electronic document is any electronic media content (other than computer programs or system files) that is intended to be used in either an electronic form or as printed output. Originally, any computer data were considered as something inter ...
s and
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
, because they have been recorded in an
obsolete
Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ...
and obscure
file format
A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free.
Some file formats ...
, or on an obsolete physical medium, for example,
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
s. The name derives from the term
''Dark Ages'' in the sense that there could be a relative lack of records in the digital age, as documents are transferred to digital formats and original copies are lost. An early mention of the term was at a conference of the
(IFLA) in 1997.
The term was also mentioned in 1998 at the Time and Bits conference,
which was co-sponsored by the
Long Now Foundation
The Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, is an American non-profit organization based in San Francisco that seeks to start and promote a long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today's "faster ...
and the
Getty Conservation Institute
The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), located in Los Angeles, California, is a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust. It is headquartered at the Getty Center but also has facilities at the Getty Villa, and commenced operation in 1985.J. Paul Getty T ...
.
Proprietary and obsolete file formats
The problem is not limited to text documents, but applies equally to photos, video, audio and other kinds of electronic documents. One concern leading to the use of the term is that documents are stored on physical
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
which require special
hardware in order to be read and that this hardware will not be available in a few decades from the time the document was created.
The digital dark age also applies to the problems which arise due to
obsolete file formats. In such a case, it is the lack of necessary
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
which causes problems when retrieving stored documents. This is especially problematic when
proprietary format
A proprietary file format is a file format of a company, organization, or individual that contains data that is ordered and stored according to a particular encoding-scheme, designed by the company or organization to be secret, such that the decodi ...
s are used, in which case it might be impossible to write appropriate software to read the file.
Archiving the internet
The
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
has stated that one of their goals is to prevent the digital dark age.
Vinton Cerf
Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of " the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. He has received honorary degrees and awards that include t ...
, Vice President of Google, showed his concerns about data preservation in the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015: "As the way that we store information about ourselves develops, memories stored in files that use older technology are becoming harder to access. That could mean that historians of the future are unable to learn about our lives". His suggested solution consists of preserving a sample of every piece of software and hardware that has ever existed so that it never becomes obsolete. He proposed taking an X-ray snapshot of the content, the application and the operating system along with a description of the machine. This information should be then stored, instead of in a museum, in servers in the cloud.
Historical examples
A famous example is
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
, whose early space records have suffered from a dark age issue more than once. For over a decade, magnetic tapes from the 1976
Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...
Mars landing
A Mars landing is a landing of a spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Of multiple attempted Mars landings by robotic, uncrewed spacecraft, ten have had successful soft landings. There have also been studies for a possible human mission to Mars, ...
were unprocessed. When later analyzed, the data was unreadable as it was in an unknown format and the original programmers had either died or left NASA. The images were eventually extracted following many months of puzzling through the data and examining how the recording machines functioned. The original
moon landing tapes were likely erased and reused, with the only video recordings of the
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module ''Eagle'' on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, an ...
landings being later copies.
Another example is the
BBC Domesday Project
The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips, Logica, and the BBC (with some funding from the European Commission's ESPRIT programme) to mark the 900th anniversary of the original ''Domesday Book'', an 11th-centu ...
in which a survey of the nation was compiled 900 years after the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
was published. While the original Domesday Book of 1086 is still readable today, there were great fears that the discs of the 1986 Domesday Project would become unreadable as software and disk drives capable of reading the format became rarer and rarer. However, in 2002 the
CAMiLEON project
migrated the information to a system called DomesEm, allowing it to be accessed on modern computers. More recently, th
Domesday86 Projecthas continued this preservation effort by developing a digitizer for the original
LaserDisc
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as DiscoVision, MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diam ...
s and emulation software for the original BBC Domesday computer system.
Encryption and data preservation
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...
may exacerbate the problem of preserving data, since decoding adds complexity even when the relevant software is available. Historically, encrypted data is quite rare, but even the very simple means available throughout history have provided many examples of documents that can only be read with great effort. For example, it took the capacity of a distributed computing project to break the mechanically generated code of a single brief
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
submarine
A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
tactical message. Modern encryption is being used in many more documents and media due to publishers wanting the promised protections of
DRM
DRM may refer to:
Government, military and politics
* Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd
* Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar
* Direction du renseignement militai ...
.
Open source file formats
As more records are stored in digital form, there have been several measures to standardize electronic file formats so software to read them is widely available and can be re-implemented on new platforms if necessary.
PDF/A
PDF/A is an ISO-standardized version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specialized for use in the archiving and long-term preservation of electronic documents. PDF/A differs from PDF by prohibiting features unsuitable for long-term archiving, ...
is an
open standard
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definition ...
based on
Adobe Systems
Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware
and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
format. It has been widely adopted by governments and archives around the world, such as the United Kingdom.
The Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) has been standardized by
OASIS
In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.”
The location of oases has been of critical imp ...
in 2005, and by ISO in 2006. Since then, support for OpenDocument has been implemented in
a large number of open source and proprietary software. Therefore, using OpenDocument is one option for archiving editable documents from office applications. More broadly, the use of
open source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...
is a prevention measure. Since the
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
for reading and writing a file format is open, the code can be used as a base for future implementations. In 2007, the chief information officer of the
UK's National Archives stated "We welcome open-source software because it makes our lives easier".
Data storage standardization
In 2007,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
created a partnership with the
UK's National Archives to prevent the digital dark age and "unlock millions of unreadable stored computer files". UK's National Archives now accepts various file formats for long-term preservation, including
Office Open XML
Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version a ...
, PDF and OpenDocument.
Criticism
The notion of the digital dark age has been criticized by some scholars. Some of these, such as David Anderson and Jon Tilbury, view it as alarmist rhetoric, maintaining that the notion of a "dark age" incorrectly states the current condition. They argue that there has been significant progress in digital preservation and evidenced in the way organizations continue to find and reuse critical long-term digital information while finding new ways of sharing these with the public. Some historians also fault proponents of the digital dark age for historical inaccuracies. These include
Marilyn Deegan and
Simon Tanner's claim that the
Gutenberg
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its kind, earlier designs w ...
printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...
revolution led Europe out of the Dark Ages, a period said to be marked by the loss of knowledge of the learning of the
ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cultu ...
and
Romans
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
. It is argued that knowledge and information about classical learning had been recovered during the Middle Ages and it was not mainly due to the printing revolution but, instead, was largely a result of the intellectual exchange between
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
ic and
Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
cultures.
See also
*
Abandonware
Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available.
Within an intellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the g ...
*
Apollo 11 missing tapes
The Apollo 11 missing tapes were those that were recorded from Apollo 11's slow-scan television (SSTV) telecast in its raw format on telemetry data tape at the time of the first Moon landing in 1969 and subsequently lost. The data tapes were use ...
*
Dark data
Dark data is data which is acquired through various computer network operations but not used in any manner to derive insights or for decision making. The ability of an organisation to collect data can exceed the throughput at which it can analy ...
*
Data archaeology
There are two conceptualisations of data archaeology, the technical definition and the social science definition.
Data archaeology (also data archeology) in the technical sense refers to the art and science of recovering computer data encoded ...
*
Data corruption
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...
*
Data rot Bit rot may refer to:
* " Bit Rot", a short story by Charles Stross
* Data rot, the decay of electromagnetic charge in a computer's storage
** Disc rot
Disc rot is the tendency of CD, DVD, or other optical discs to become unreadable because of ...
*
Digital continuity Digital continuity is the ability to maintain the digital information of a creator in such a way that the information will continue to be available, as needed, despite changes in digital technology. It focuses on making sure that information is comp ...
*
Digital obsolescence
Digital obsolescence is the risk of data loss because of inabilities to access digital assets, due to the hardware or software required for information retrieval being repeatedly replaced by newer devices and systems, resulting in increasingly in ...
*
Digital preservation
In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods an ...
*
Document Freedom Day
Document Freedom Day (DFD) is an annual event to "celebrate and raise awareness of Open Standards". It is celebrated on the last Wednesday of March each year. Document Freedom Day was first celebrated on 26 March 2008, and has continued to be cele ...
*
M-DISC
M-DISC (Millennial Disc) is a write-once optical disc technology introduced in 2009 by Millenniata, Inc.and available as DVD and Blu-ray discs.
Overview
M-DISC's design is intended to provide archival media longevity.M-Disc claims that prope ...
*
Open-source-software movement
The open-source-software movement is a movement that supports the use of open-source licenses for some or all software, as part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The open-source movement was started to spread the concept/idea of open- ...
*
Orphaned works
An orphan work is a copyright-protected work for which rightsholders are positively indeterminate or uncontactable. Sometimes the names of the originators or rightsholders are known, yet it is impossible to contact them because additional details ...
*
Software rot
Software rot (bit rot, code rot, software erosion, software decay, or software entropy) is either a slow deterioration of software quality over time or its diminishing responsiveness that will eventually lead to software becoming faulty, unusabl ...
References
Further reading
A Digital Dark Ages? Challenges in the Preservation of Electronic Information (PDF) 1997
Coming Soon A Digital Dark Age - CBS News 2003
2003
*
ttps://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/the-digital-dark-age/2005/09/22/1126982184206.html The digital Dark Age - The Sydney Morning Herald 2005
Why the Demise of Print Media May Be Bad for Humanity, Tony Bradley, PCWorld, 19 March 2012Bit Rot - The Economist, 28 April 2012*
{{DigitalPreservation
Prediction
Lost works
Digital preservation
Dark ages