Comment Re:This surprises you how? (Score 1) 438
This is the biggest issue with digital information storage vs. paper, 10 gigs of digital information can be backed up in a few minutes onto another harddrive or tape and can be stored offsite. That same information on paper would be an enormous task to have offsite, not to mention any changes to the paper would be incredibly hard to track and backup, unlike digital.
People seem to forget that companies used to really worry about having a disaster that would wipe out their paper archive system. Some companies still store an enormous amount of irreplacible information on paper. Digital has made it possible to cheap multiple copies of huge amounts of information.
So while this might not be a great solution for 500 years of archiving data, it works great for people and companies now, and really whose gonna want to read an insurance database in 500 years. By that time the GM'd corn crops will have developped a collective mind an enslaved the entire human race.
People seem to forget that companies used to really worry about having a disaster that would wipe out their paper archive system. Some companies still store an enormous amount of irreplacible information on paper. Digital has made it possible to cheap multiple copies of huge amounts of information.
So while this might not be a great solution for 500 years of archiving data, it works great for people and companies now, and really whose gonna want to read an insurance database in 500 years. By that time the GM'd corn crops will have developped a collective mind an enslaved the entire human race.
