Readable Formats

One Hundred Fifty Fifth Post: Readable Formats

Imagine a time 20 years from now. Arguably not a long time, but a lot can happen in 20 years. You now have children or your children have grown and you now have grandchildren. Technology has always been a great influence on everyday life. Now the world is no longer dependent on oil thanks to ethanol and non waste producing nuclear fuels. But one thing hasn’t changed in 20 years and that is the use of computers. If anything it has grown. Whole houses are know integrated with computer controls.

The thing that interests you is not the latest virtual reality games, but to share with the children that journal you wrote 20 years ago along with the trip across Europe where you took hundreds of digital photos of your journey. Fortunately, the JPEG format you pictures are in is still supported as legacy file format, but there is just one little problem. The journal you wrote was not saved in text format. It is in a proprietary format of some obscure word processor. Now you journal has survived not being lost in the last 20 years, but reading it in the new upgraded word process the journal file is unreadable.

So the moral or question raised is what current formats are going to be supported 5 to 10 to 20 or more years from now. The standard web formats will probably be supported, but is there going to be a library of formats that can read files without having the original software. If not current files will be useless unless preserved by the maker of the file.

It also raises the question how will future generations study our culture if we cannot preserve all file types. Now with computers it is possible to leave children with experiences and memories that film just couldn’t accomplished. That painting that was lost in the attic is now comparable to finding a Photoshop file from 15 years ago.

How will it these files be preserved. It is a question we must ask. But you might be able to ask that engineering company that has drawings over a hundred years old or Disney which has cartoons from 1930. The importance of preserving memories is apparent. It will be interesting to see how it is solved.