It's a big question, which users of computers and the internet, in our headlong rush to the future, seldom have time to stop and contemplate. But as the amount of information grows, as new generations of hardware and software cascade upon us, it's a question that is fast becoming a critical one.

When Yawning Bread first began, I was backing up stuff using 3-and-a-half inch floppies. Recordable CD-ROMs had not yet appeared.

Today, many models of personal computers do not come with floppy drives as standard features anymore. If I had not switched to using CD-ROMs, but stuck instead to floppies, if I had not re-backed-up my files onto CD-ROMs, my floppy back-ups would be as good as useless.

But what makes anyone think CD-ROMs will prevail any better?

After all, the data on CD-ROMs are just inert patterns of microscopic pits on a surface. To read them requires today's kind of CD-ROM drives, using the lasers (with specific wavelengths) that can distinguish the bits of data represented by those pits. Considering how fast data storage technology is evolving, I'd give it no more than 3 years before today's CD-ROMs and its drives reach obsolescence..

If so, the pits will just be pits, not data.

Software changes just as fast, and is anyone keeping old versions of software?

Do I have to reformat Yawning Bread to cater to succeeding generations of software? How much work will that involve as the number of essays grow?

No wonder few people wish to contemplate such questions. It seems like trying to stop the sun from rising.

Fortunately, there are people thinking about it. In the 15 September 2005 issue of Economist magazine, was an article about where that thinking has reached. As you can see, it's rather technical, and I regret I am not in any position to explain the idea to you. Please read it for yourself, it's on the right.

All I can say is, I certainly hope they find a solution before it's too late.

* * * * *

Of course, it's not a new problem to humankind.

2,000 years ago, when all but a handful of humans were illiterate, knowledge was shared and passed down orally. Besides being very prone to errors that accumulated with each retelling, it was highly dependent on spoken language, and extremely limited by physical distance. As soon as one generation failed to pass it on, or as soon as a language, or even just a tribe, died out, all that knowledge was lost.

Writing improved things somewhat. Relay errors were reduced, though until printing came onto the scene (first in China), manual copying too was very prone to errors.

Whether by copying or printing, humans generally used organic materials such as like bark, leather, paper or silk, and these could decay even faster than present-day digital bits.

Carving on stone was slow and laborious. Etching on soft clay and then baking the tablets was fuel-intensive. These substrates could not have been commonly used, except for the most important occasions of state or for dedications to gods. Hence, what was recorded on hard substrates was probably an unrepresentative fraction of all there was.

Even when words were carved onto stone, they were exposed to decay too. Buildings and monuments have been and will be knocked over by earthquakes, cracked and grown over by jungle roots, eroded by sandstorms and buried by alluvia.

But most critically of all, the language and the writing code, i.e. the software, can disappear too, and all we're left with are marks scratched onto stone.

The wonder then is that modern archeologists have generally been able to decipher what stone writing we have unearthed. It testifies to the way language and writing has been evolutionary, such that if we go backwards one step at a time, we can make out some very old script.

Even more wonderful is that Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan pictograms and Linear B have been deciphered though they had no modern equivalent. Figuring them out were supreme achievements of human intelligence.

Against these ranged supreme achievements of human destructiveness. The first Qin emperor of China was well known for his book-burning frenzy. Hitler did the same. Mao let loose his Red Guards  to smash books and art that propagated effete bourgeois culture. The Khmer Rouge were more efficient -- they decided to eliminate everyone who knew anything.

A thousand years ago, popes in the Vatican ordered all genitals of Greek and Roman statues to be smashed, defacing forever exquisite art. In 2001, the fanatical Taliban regime blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. In 2003, the Iraqis looted their own National Museum when the US invaded the country yet failed to offer any security, caring only about flexing its macho firepower. In 2005, the Singapore government wants all copies of Martyn See's video documentary of Chee Soon Juan destroyed -- not that See's video is comparable to the Iraqi museum, but hey, knowledge is knowledge.

Between the inexorable forces of nature and the inexcusable idiocy of humans, we should be thankful for the body of knowledge that we do have. Credit must go to librarians and curators who strive against natural elements, blind dogma and the insatiable demands of economic progress.

I don't know how long Yawning Bread will survive me, if it survives me at all. But if it does, it won't be thanks to me really, but to someone out there who is crazy enough to think it is worth the trouble.

So, to mark the 500th essay, I ask you, dear reader, to reflect for a moment with deep appreciation, on the tireless, uncelebrated work of librarians and curators the world over, who have husbanded the information and knowledge we all take for granted, without which civilisation would have been impossible.

© Yawning Bread