There seems to be growing concern that the various media types for recordable and rewriteable CDs will deteriorate. The likelihood exists that data will forever have to be moved from one media type to another, making the data nomadic. As I considered this, I realized that almost all data is better off being nomadic. Very few media types can withstand the ravages of time.
Books fall apart, go up in flames, get eaten by worms, or just deteriorate.
It's a miracle when we find old scrolls from 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. And surely we are freaked out about longevity, because we really think that our thoughts should be considered by others not one or two hundred years from now, but 3,000 years from now. I think it would be a kick, at some point in the distant future, for someone to be poring over old copies of PC Magazine , rereading my Inside Track columns, and pondering the ancient fate of the battles between AMD and Intel. The AMD and Intel battle would be considered a saga that occurred during some ancient corporate era when men wore odd garb and identified each other by a twist of cloth around the neck. I'd be remembered as the great chronicler of a lost time.