Storage is our Past, Present, and Future

Jonathan has an interesting piece on the value of past data in the present, and how we need to preserve the present so the future has a rich past upon which to draw. He makes two points.

• Analog films from the past, when digitally remastered to DVD in the present, give the viewer a higher quality viewing experience than the original viewers experienced.
• The production of a digital full-length movie in the present requires 1 Pedabyte of storage

Future rendering systems will increase the quality of the present data, so we will naturally want to store all of our data for future exploitation.

This will be true not just for the film industry, but for all sectors. For example, the current value to present genealogists of a 17th century parish register of births, marriages, and deaths, far exceeds the value of the register to the priest who recorded the data.