The digital half-life
I had an experience recently that reminded me how fragile the Knowledge Value Chain really is. A client had asked for information on the quality of intelligence, a topic that I’ve addressed in many talks over the years. I looked through dozens of PowerPoint slide shows from these talks, and was printing the slides that were most relevant to his question.
Then, when looking though a file created about 12 years ago, I got an error message that the file was incompatible, and could not be opened. I tried another file of the same vintage, and got the same message.
After some research on one of Microsoft’s excellent support sites, I’ve come to the conclusion that the software I’m using (PowerPoint 2007, which I find superior in all other respects to its predecessor) will not open the file I’m trying to access.
To be fair, it is possible to load the previous version of the software (2003) and retrieve the file. Because The Knowledge Agency is a Microsoft Partner, we get all of their software and would not incur additional charges to do this.
At least not for software. The time and hassle for my company to do this must also be factored in.
But what about companies that are not Microsoft Partners, and who typically standardize on one set of software? Will this create a market for third-party data translation experts (such firms exist)—or will companies in general just “forget” about this older data in the heat of battle?
If my experience is any indication, the latter will be the outcome.
And we’re just talking about file format incompatibilities. What about media reader incompatibilities? In my recent office move, I came across dozens of Zip disks—which I have no ready way to access. Anybody still have data on a 3½-inch floppy drive? Good luck finding a machine that has a drive that will read it. And how about the 5¼-inch disks that the original PCs used when they debuted in 1982?
And so on, you get the idea. Now, I’m not suggesting that the pace of change should slow. Each of these changes is for the most part an improvement over earlier technologies, and Microsoft and other companies in general do make an effort to maintain file backwards-compatibility—over a delimited span of time.
It’s just a question of what that time span is. I suggest the term digital half-life for the average time between the creation of a digital file and the general market introduction of a “new and improved” version that will no longer open that file in one simple step (like clicking on the file icon).
Contrast this with the life of books. When I was at Yale, I used to go to the Beineke Rare Book Library, not to read anything, but just to look and marvel at things like a 500-year-old Gutenberg bible. With care, that bible will still be readable in another 500 years.
But my PowerPoint? Not readable after 12 years. Lest you get the wrong idea, my point is not to compare my slide show with the Bible! In fact, I’m not at all sure I would have even used the data if I had been able to open the file.
It’s just the principle that data “evaporates” so quickly—it’s scary.
What are the implications of this? For TKA as a research company, it means that we print anything important in hard copy, and file it. That’s just a basic operating rule around here.
For me as an observer of the information landscape, it has more grave implications. IF as a society we digitize everything—and we’re accelerating our progress in that direction…AND IF these data files have a digital half-life that can in some cases be counted in single digit years…THEN we run the risk of becoming a society that systematically “forgets” everything rapidly.
A society that forgets nearly instantly will not be burdened by a lot of baggage it’s dragging into the future. But it also may need to “reinvent the wheel” over and over—unless it finds a way to just do without wheels.
Recent Comments
on A brief pause: “Thanks, Les. My frequent conversations with you over the past year or two has helped my thinking a lot in…” Jan 15, 13:07
on A brief pause: “Excellent advice thank you for your terrific reflection piece Tim!” Jan 15, 09:40
on Knowledge Erosion: How to Avoid It: “Hi Tim I am knoco caribbean. About to join the global km family. Exploring km frameworks for design, development, implementation,…” Jul 12, 08:52
on War of the Words: ““Chat credited me with founding and/or leading 20 different companies and writing 13 books. In fact, I founded one company…” Jun 22, 22:42
Hey Tim,
I really enjoyed this entry — as someone who has been using computers since the 70s, and owned a PC since the 80s, I’ve gone through all those different formats, and tried (but not fully succeeded) in carrying my data into the new formats. I still have many files written in WordPerfect for DOS format (fortunately I can still convert them), and I suspect I still have some in MultiMate format, the wordprocessing program I used in the late 80s. I still have have some boxes of 5.25 and 3.5 disks that I’m terrified to throw away, as well as zip disks and CDs (I no longer use any of these formats for storage).
And don’t even get me started on the music/video storage hassle — I’ve got vinyl, CD, and VHS and cassette tapes collecting dust in the back of my closet, and (except for the CDs, just barely) I have no way to play most of them anymore!
So – your entry brought to mind something I’d read a long time ago — this is not the first time that technology changes have meant loss of data. The same thing happened during the Middle Ages, believe it or not, with the growing popularity of the codex (or as we know it, the book) in place of the scroll.
Books (in their familiar codex form) were a Roman technology invented for lawyers, who needed to be able to quickly access information. For this purpose, they were greatly superior to the older format of scrolls, which needed to opened all the way out to find relevant information. In the Middle Ages, they became popular for literature as well – they were easy to store, very portable, and provided speedy access to information (kind of an early form of Random Access Memory).
As books became popular with the reading public that no one wanted to use scrolls anymore. They became scrap paper (remember that vellum and parchment were very expensive, so often re-used). Not all ancient works made the transition from scroll to book (because it was incredibly laborious and expensive in an era when all writing had to be copied by hand), and many ancient works were lost this way.
There’s a bit of info about this on the Wikipedia entry on codices:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex
and also on this site about the Roman use of the codex format:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/scroll/scrollcodex.html
Anyway, thanks for a thought-provoking article!
PS One positive thing about the digital age is that many people are trying to archive as much as possible on the Internet. It’s now possible to find old TV commercials on YouTube, and even video games from the 1970s, as well as many out-of-prints works of literature… but no matter what, there will be casualties lost to the digital age.
My old Journey albums, for example, aren’t likely to make it to my MP3 collection!