The Pioneers of the Internet Warn

June 11, 2013 / Melody Smith / Comments Off on The Pioneers of the Internet Warn

Vinton Cerf is considered one of the geniuses, or computer scientists, who turned on the Internet in 1983. Imagine the amount of data created since that time and you wouldn’t think that much would be lost or unreachable in the future. But he disagrees. Cerf warned that digital things created today — spreadsheets, documents, and presentations, as well as mountains of scientific data — won’t be readable in the years and centuries ahead.

This interesting information was found on Computer World in their article, “Cerf sees a problem: Today’s digital data could be gone tomorrow.”

This backward portability and compatibility could provide many difficulties in accessing and interpreting data in the future. The data can be stored, but what about the reader? Are we keeping enough technology around to access it? Should we?

These are tough questions. The article discusses some ways that they are being addressed, but I would imagine that the technology in the future will be surprising, no matter how much we prepare. Only time will tell.

Melody K. Smith

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Melody Smith

Melody K. Smith has provided organizational, social media and digital communication services to a large non-profit for the past twenty years. Prior to that she championed employee engagement and communications in the healthcare field. She holds a Bachelors degree in Marketing. When not wrangling and writing TaxoDiary content for your reading pleasure, Melody writes fiction, rescues dogs and throws legendary dinner parties.