Can We Avoid A Digital Dark Age? 

Paper storage didn't work too well at the Great Library of Alexandria.

I don't think it would be a disaster if certain data on the internet would be lost forever

The idea of DNA date storage is quite cool. Imagine in the near future you're going to school, no books no bag, nothing. You go to your classroom and just plug yourself to a computer. Within yourself is all the data you need. You kinda do this already with a usb but this time your body is the usb. Side note: Imagine this dna data thing really hits off - could it be that we can write code and store it in our body and it will act with our brain? Like imagine once you're born you get injected with this code that prepares you for everything. You would never need a doctor because you have everything in your body to fight any disease.. I'm high atm. Join me.

I know what a floppy disc is. Does that make me old?

I heard about a Crystal storage method being developed a while ago that could theoretically hold information indefinitely. So how's that going? It'd be great to see a follow up video, it sounded very promising.

Did I miss something or did he just say we lose a lot of data because of new storages designs and file formats and his solution to this is a new data storage that isn't ready yet?

well done man. the best topics with the best presentation, not to underestimate the others.

I don't think the digital dark age will happen, I think the most rocky time in digital storage is over or at least on the decline. First physical objects are not guaranteed perpetuation either, there are books that no longer exist. Second, the software to use old hardware or decode old formats can be made by semi-smart high schoolers, ie it's rarely complicated. Third with the decrease in the cost of storage, duplicates and backups will become extremely universal. Think of it like this, you store a file on your Dropbox or Google Drive, (with the right settings) it is duplicated to their servers and then your phone. This will only get more ubiquitous, data will be everywhere. There will be data loss, some stupid late adopter companies won't have triple backup and loose something. Someone will take pictures and drop the camera before they upload it. Eventually even these cases will become rare and new hardware will do wireless auto-backup and even keep internal backups. We'll hit a point where data is so cheap and condensed the pressure to innovate will all but disappear but for special use cases, at which point changes in formats will be rare. So... I'm not remotely concerned.

Cerf designed the highway(the hardware) part of the "internet". Berners-Lee invented the software protocol that made the transfer of information over the internet easier, but other protocols like UDP already existed. The World Wide Web is a euphemism used to describe the interconnection between all the various LAN's on a global scale that allows for mass information exchange through regional protocol servers. So technically the WWW is like an extranet for all the exchange servers that choose to be connected via internet connections. That being said there are plenty of stand alone private area networks and PAN's that have limited access to the "internet".

Can you please link the Corbert Report reference as well? Can't find it anywhere.

"Why can't it store digital information" this reminds me of that one part in Portal 2 where the CEO of Aperture Science says "why can't a computer hold a human mind if it can hold data" or something on those lines

I had a computer with floppy drive up till about 2009, I still have it there running windows 98 to play old dos games. I had to install a CD burner to transfer data from all the floppy disks I had onto CD. Tho you can buy a USB floppy disk drive these days. But I noticed some files in formats used by programs not installed on my new laptop, older programs that may not install anymore and to convert them is the tricky part. Tho some websites have online converters and readers to open all sort of files.

What's needed is a project to create multiple vaults of specialized paper libraries designed to specifically teach a dark age human how to create the modern technology required to access long term digital storage - starting from the basics with a rosetta stone and tools to teach the languages the books are written on. In the vault would be stored the library of humanity, with the collective sum of human history as we know it with all the success and failures, as well as cultural media without concern over copyright (since it's meant to be accessed long after copyrights expire). We could also store the genetic sequences in data of every known species, including epigenetic information, and preserve physical tissue samples alongside an expanded seed storage system, to include more than just crops. Additionally, equipment for accessing it directly kept in EM shielded environmentally sealed containers. The vault could be updated rather easily each generation with new equipment and long term storage devices. Seems elaborate, but the only way to guarentee access is to first make the equipment available and to also teach how to replace whatever equipment fails to survive the test of time. If such a vault was created in multiple locations around the world it would increase the odds of knowledge surviving catastrophic disaster.

DNews, I love you guys, but can we please, please, PLEASE refrain from even jokingly telling people to not upgrade? I'd like to avoid having every piece of software become like the Internet Explorer horribleness. IE6, a browser released a decade ago, is *still* in use today because people don't upgrade. Please don't encourage it. (As a web designer, I feel physical pain and nausea every time anyone says "Internet Explorer compatibility")

Whatever the next mobile digital storage media may be, I want them to put it into a case the same dimensions as the old 3.5 floppys. The little squares just felt right when carrying them around. Gimme mah nostalgia!

Great episode!

Good! Julian is back!

what if you chang part of dna into digital na and put it into a foetus

Nice one, Julian. I liked the preemptive strike against those who might start an argument in the posts on who invented the Internet by referencing who invented the world wide web.

I'm gonna print my old MySpace and Facebook pages because it's like a journal and it will be fun to look back on. Speaking of which i wanted to access my old aol profile (that webpage everyone made) But they aren't available :(

Hard copy, my collection of old computer hardware and current tech storage. Side note, I'm probably the only guy on the planet owning all custom discs of a Dutch elementary school from back in the mid 80's. Why? Because I love data

If Julian ever leaves the internet I will riot. He thinks and speaks just as I do and I love learning things from him. My apologies for how canned that seems, but I mean it.

I'm Canadian and a huge hockey fan. So I would really like to know where u got that shirt? Thanks.

Why would you say no to a java update? It is one of those languages where you can still type older style code and it would still compile.

I really enjoyed this episode. Make more like this.

I love how according to the video "as long as we can decode it" works for DNA but not digital data. You still can read floppies if you really need to today and you'll still be able to a hundred years from now, provided said floppies survived.

"not today to java updates" does bring up the real issue of why we could see real problems in the future both in terms of security and retaining of digital information. We have become so dependent on Oracle for Java, Adobe and other plug-in and protocol software that you have a single point of failure. It's like those poorly designed duodenoscopes at UCLA that cornered the market in the 80's and have only recently been redesigned to be safer. When you have one design that has a monopoly on the market and that design is a bad one your bound to get "viruses".

Backup personal data to multiple HDs and cloud storage, but that personal data is tiny ~ just a bunch of text files, my personalized mouse pointers and a few pictures ... everything else, I can recover from torrents, as needed ~ and I've done this a couple times when hard drives eventually fail ...

What was the first Webpage ever about?

Good question. Like the method of ripping CDs to .wav and .mp3 files, I think that there will always be conversion methods to bring our data to the next device, in the most relevant format, so it can continue to function with the latest software.

About preserving old data structures having the problem of no programs being able to read it. It seems to me that there is an emulator for.... everything! There's not on ly emulators for every majorly popular system but even really obscure ones. Like the ZV 300 I had when I was a kid. So I think if people want to preserve stuff, they can transfer it over to newer media and it will be fine.

Isn't there also crystal encryption? Or something similar to that, don't know the technical term.

I guess I can see the concern, but not sure I totally agree. 1. Hard drives while they do fail, it's generally not something like interference,etc. Generally they fail because mechanical parts have a certain life, and no circuit design is perfect, and chips can fail, drive firmware can get corrupted. SSD's are much more stable than most mechanical drives. 2. For individuals it's not real hard to go get like 2 multi TB hard drives. If you have one at home, and one in a bank, or use a cloud backup. you should have little to worry about. I always have at least two backup of all my stuff, some of it is backed up 3-4 ways. 3. For many years now servers, and other industrial storage systems have been using some form of raid. Raid version 5 is still common, but if you use raid 15 it would be hard to lose anything to disk failure. Deletion, hacking yes possibly. 4, I can see the file format issue, but I can't imagine that becoming an issue. At least in general images have a few common formats, music has a few, text files have been around like forever. A .doc file that could be changed, which it has to .docx, but new office still works with old. Even PDF that was originally an adobe thing, now there are tons of programs that will open it. Only fear I can agree with here is like say you use something like acronis backup, the company fails, something new replaces it. Things with custom encoding setups will likely be lost. This is why I don't use backup programs I do it by hand. I suppose a file system like NTFS, or ext for linux could go away, but even then these type things are supported for years. Windows 7 will still format something using fat if you want (this was the format from like windows 95). Anything is possible, but to me this fear seems a bit overkill. If you implement your backups properly, and your using good storage methods on your systems it don't seem that likely. Backups, etc are stuff that get messed up often though.

Data stored on paper can also be EASILY DESTROYED, however. Computer data, even with the tricky bits of evolving decoding/encoding methods....can still usually be recovered, even if the device it's stored in has been damaged or seemingly erased. Think of the Library of Alexandria. THINK OF THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA. Let's just hope that digital data storage doesn't lead to a second, far more devastating Library of Alexandria...

wouldnt it hypothetically be possible to store data as quantum information? as in the quantum state of particles within an object

I think the real problem is not the format... but just too much information. We are at the point where storage is so cheap.. rather than deciding what to keep... we just buy bigger drives. If we were more selective about what we are keeping, we would be able to keep updating and data to modern versions easily.

Perhaps public libraries should keep devices to read outdated data formats. (At least really prominent libraries)

Wow, Julian's biceps

With dna would we store our data in quartenary?

So, if you can store so much data on DNA, why can't you just have millions of copies of the same thing (for redundancy) to prevent errors like they do when they transmit data from space probes?

My old collection of VHS cassettes is about 15-20 years. Almost all of them still have good video quality.

I like Julian.. I like it when he explains things to me (Talks to me) You should keep this guy in front of the cam more often.

THANK YOU for using Celsius!

wouldn't the software needed to decode said dna also be at risk of being lost or outdated?

I thought this was going to be about privacy, not obsolescence. My computer science teacher used to keep her old bank records on a reel-to-reel, but now she cant read them

Sounds promising, so long as the read and write speed are fast enough that is.

"Whats a floppy disk you ask?" Captions: "Whats a laser disk you ask?" give me a fucking break already, Dnews, I think you need to fire the person who writes the captions.

Love this kind of videos from DNews. talking about many of the aspects in which things can affect us and do affect us in life, such as technology and storing data.

The IT Crowd reference at 1:16

What about pics & Video on social Media sites? will those be retrievable? I mean FB seems to be staying around as Tech gets better

You are just creating a layer on top of binaries so if there is an issue with storage, this also will be.

My other computer just died and I hadn't backed up any of it! All my digital drawings and documents gone! So yeah that sucks. Paper wouldn't randomly decide to stop working but it's not like we can exactly go all analog.

The way I figure it.. if you store images, files, apps, etc. on an archive (DVD, flash etc.), in 10 years, how much of that will still be important to you? Pictures maybe, but apps? not likely. archiving is not a permanent solution, just a good temporary one.

it´s not about the storage, it´s about the programmes that decode it...if you would have a dna storage, with everything that was ever on the internet, and you wouldn´t have the software to decode it, it would be useless...

+1 for saying data as plural -1 for using that stock image of html full of

People need to remember that if it weren't for the Rosetta stone, a lot of historical texts would be indecipherable.

Problem is... A fire will just as easily destroy your printed data just as readily. Virtual machines exist that can help read outdated data. The only permanent solution would be to etch it into sapphire. Try storing that!

fascinating

I use my 64GB USB stick to store everything and I only have about 10GB of free space left.

You should do a video on infrasound and its horrifying possible effects :)

1:47 lol Julian, nice. Dat meme.

If the problem is backing up to the internet like to servers and the cloud, why not just get external drives and something that would work with it in the future? My folks still have floppy disks and a hard drive compatible with them so I'm pretty sure we can get USB's with some ports to work in the future. And I'm even more certain that the formats could be updated to match the format of the "newer generation".

i live the 4d cube in the background

Get Julian to host more episodes!

That intro haha

Well, Why not just store all important files, right on the internet? I don't see the internet dying out soon like hardware does, and if the software of the future, just so happens not to be backwards compatible to read the files, I am very sure that there will be a program or system, that could read the files, or convert them or something along the line... i.e like a dos-emulator.

how about storing information in crystals with holographic data storage? heared a while ago that would be the future of storing data... well diddnt hear alot about it after that xD

Damn, that DNA shit blew my mind.

Here is an idea, save hundreds of copies of the same data on a single strand of DNA. The decoding computer would look at all the strands and recreate the original data based on what data is consistent on all of the copies.

two things to walk on cost and decoding

anyone born after 1999 would most likely not know what a floppy disc is, oh wait, that was 16 years ago, FUCK! I'm getting so old that 1999 feels like just a few years ago!

love the video . fun fact the MechaGodzilla from *"Godzilla against MechaGodzilla" and "Godzilla Tokyo s.o.s." uses DNA computers .

Not even information last forever. Everything will eventually wither away into nothing.

Are there really peoples who don't know what a floppy disk is? It is old but you can't say it's unheard of.

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” ― Bill Gates

Once we can read DNA we will no longer need passwords. But they are still useful on a professional level if you need to fire an employee. Changing the password is easier than changing DNA.

Julian Huguet kinda looks like Hank Green from sci show.....

I'm pro paper. It's bulky and inefficient but you can't hack it. The only way you will get my data off the paper is to steal the paper. And you have to go through me first to even get close to it. I'll take my chances with paper. Hacking data from a computer 1000s of miles away is kind of impressive. But, it's a cowards occupation. You'd have to have much larger balls than a hacker to break into my house and steal my data. My most important data stays on my person at all times. So, you'd have to have some pretty massive stones to try and take it from me, unless you're stupid. In which case, you won't be stupid for long. I'm good at fixing stupid.

RAID for everything, cloud storage just for the invaluable things.

Who needs to make every piece of information immortal? I mean, lot of people might want it, but who actually needs it? Improtant informations will probably stay in human knowledge, and ensuring it is not about way of storage but about way of spreding that information further and further.

What if i said that I run a web server off a floppy?

I read somewhere that in the whole Internet was stored on DNA it would weigh 5 pounds.

Julian, you should be the new Peter Parker!

I feel old knowing floppy and VHS.

"What's a floppy disc?" ... joke.... Um, no. No don't say that. I know what a floppy disc is and I'm glad it's gone, and that makes the joke garbage. For most of a decade I carried a set of floppies with me in case I needed to install an operating system. Creating more hardcopy photos should be a thing, everything else is probably just nonsense. Being in the information age requires us all to rethink what information is actually worth keeping, and if you keep that info on a floppy you're making a huge mistake.

If DNA can store so much data, can it be used as a means of storing memories from our brains and somehow transfered to another individual?

Funny moment when you show a picture of html instead of data storage xD 1:45

dude those tubes make me think of star trek ... their usb sticks are like that

The idea of using DNA drives to store data for longevity suffers from the same arguments you presented at the beginning of the video. As ways to encode data improve, we will leave behind old storage methods and ways to decode it. DNA drives with compression algorithms and file formats today may not be readable in the future!

Yes. Scan it all to slides/microfilm

Make backups and backups of the backups. Keep the backup's backups in an EMP proof case and keep it somewhere dry. But damn print all the picture? you know how many pictures people take now a days? selfies in the shitter in my county alone stacked could probably reach the moon.

Bleached bones in the ground seems to be enough information to keep the lab coats happy. If its important it will be used and if not deleted, that's evolution.

Know what lasts longer than Paper? Metal. What lasts longer than Metal? Stone. So why don't we store everything on stone? =P (If you couldn't tell, this wasn't a serious comment. I know someone was going to start listing off a thousand reasons of "why not" in response, cause it's the internet :D)

Could we make a DNA computer then?

This reminded me of an article I read several years back about how some languages die out. While we might know how to read it, languages such as a the Mayans' is still a mystery to us. Here is an article of a man who is one of the last people to know of a dying language: www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/13/mexico-language-ayapaneco-dying-out Also we still have the knowledge of how data is stored on these devices. Yea it might be very difficult to come by the actual device in the future, but it's not impossible. However, data needs to be renewed since it can't last on a device forever. So it's not the further advancement of technology that might cause a digital dark age, but the failure to renew the data in time. And like Julian said, DNA may be one of these things that might prolong the data. I wonder how long my VHS tapes might last.

Only softwares die and hardwares might die ! Pictures and Videos can be converted everytime something new is invented. We don't need to print. just convert jpeg to something available at that time.

That Java update is like a disease

We need to start chiseling on stone walls again.

But... How are we going to access the data that's inside the dna?

Pretty sure anything that matters is stored in a format well-documented, or at least well-protected with redundancy, but okay.