I know plenty of people without degrees who would happily build that stuff. And those people who have degrees who could build these things, don't have math or eletronics degrees. I do, that's why I buy these old things and keep them working. Which is why keeping your stuff on current media is an important thing for archivists to do. So, you buy enough lemon drives to transfer it to an orange drive when that becomes hip.
Archives seem capable of spending millions on buying new air-conditioned buildings.
Single examples are not terribly meaningful. I have notebooks from my younger days that are now rubbish due to water damage. I wouldn't use that example to decide whether the world should use paper ornot. Everybody doesn't need a CD writer. Comparing the storage costs alone for significant amounts of data makes many of the electronic solutions the only realistic long term solution.