Gimme a break; I was twelve, and had not yet heard of open standards. I just used the software that came on the computer. Now I'm a web services librarian. I write software too, and I sing the open standards gospel daily.
ASCII is great, though I'd actually prefer UTF, thank you, on the grounds that diacritics actually do matter, not to mention the ability to encode things in Cyrillic, Korean, or Scandinavian runes. Though even UTF has its limits. Let me know when you work out a way to store NTSC format video encoded in some damn proprietary codec as text, okay? Or, for that matter, video games, which are literary and artistic works worthy of preservation.
The simple fact is, computers are inherently more complex than older information storage methods. The information they store cannot be read directly by a human. Unless you can hold a hard drive to your head and sense the magnetic charges directly, the information must be interpreted by software first. That simple, undeniable requirement adds several layers of complexity to any attempt at long-term preservation of digital data. For ample demonstration, just go read Keeping Stuff, a delightful essay by a comp sci professor at Grinnell in which he discusses his attempts to preserve his own undergraduate work from the early '70s.
Oh, and you can wag your finger at me some more as soon as you've worked out an open standards solution to the fact that basically every non-geek does all their work in proprietary programs that spit out crappy proprietary files, and then expect them to last forever.