In a slight divergence from my previous posts on archives and the environment, this time I’ve decided to look at the possible future of archives, along with recalling a few themes I came across from the digital preservation workshop delivered by UAL last year.
Do you still remember Floppy Discs? Tom Cruise, aka Mission Impossible, saved the entire world via the big, strong and dependable Floppy Disc when he performed bungee ballet in the first film. (He even performed magic on Floppy Discs! What’s not to love?) How about VHS tapes? Apparently, VHS tapes are back in vogue - à la Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ circa 1990, filmed on 4:3 aspect ratio (as in the literal measurement of the film strip) - yep, VHS has become cool again according to The New York Times. But fear not, Blockbusters isn’t coming back any time soon. Unless Netflix goes hipster, that is. But let’s just stay in the cool 90s for a moment when even Keanu Reeves - sorry, I meant Johnny Mnemonic - downloaded a whopping three-hundred and twenty gigabytes of data into his brain. I repeat, an incredible three-hundred and twenty gigabytes of data into his actual brain. ‘But why?!’, I hear you ask, when these days people find it safer to use USB flash drives that hold up to 1 terabyte of data in their pockets, not brains…yet (I’m looking at you brain implants).
Looking back, it’s so easy to think how ridiculous and hilarious ancient humankind felt when showcasing their cool and latest technology at the time. We owe this to the joy of, in archival parlance, obsolescence. Does that mean we should all ditch our Apple Macs because in twenty years’ time ‘Orange Nacs’ will be all the rage? Well, I honestly don’t know - maybe? Because, soon, the future of data storage might just be in glass, or crystals, or even DNA.
Frustrated with having to get a new hard drive after three to five years? Or anyone still remember the bother of having to clean old CDs with special cleaning fluids? Perhaps one might even remember the old-school necessity of periodic VHS head cleaning! We have, indeed, come a long way when it comes to storing our data and memories. Well, now we could soon have glass. Glass as a storage medium for data was first conceived by the University of Southampton back in 2013. With the possibility of storing around 360 terabytes of data, and the promise of incredible durability and longevity with their glass discs withstanding over 1,000 degrees and lasting for 13.8 billion years! In the event of catastrophic data loss (either environmentally, in a nuclear fashion or simply through natural degradation), then these glass discs would come in super handy.
Better yet, these glass discs might even find a home in, quite possibly, the final frontier of archival storage - space. Despite the failure of the crowdfunded Lunar Mission One, intended to have launched in 2024, one of the mission’s aims was to bury two digital files on the moon. Such an idea has, now, found new momentum after the University of Arizona published a paper titled ‘Lunar Pits and Lava Tubes for a Modern Ark’ which suggests safeguards be put into place to preserve the world’s reproductive cells – yep, sperm and ova – and that the moon would be an ideal place to store all of this. You know, just in case we eventually wipe ourselves out (let’s rephrase the last bit - when we do eventually wipe ourselves out).
But just imagine what would happen when, after we’re all gone and aliens stumble upon our lunar archive repository (fingers-crossed Oumuamua is indeed an alien scout, and they decide to come visit again soon), those big-headed, bug-eyed, and small-bodied creatures find our glass discs and bodily fluids, learn of our history and decide to not revive us in the end (though I’m sure the human race would continue in some fashion - with 8 legs this time from the exposure to radiation - on Mars). Nonetheless, I am certain that our extra-terrestrial neighbours would enjoy the world’s archived data dump of TikTok videos - the truest source of understanding the human condition.