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Re: orthography and pronunciation

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Thursday, April 12, 2001, 16:36
John Cowan wrote:
> > In addition, diskettes only last a few years, while most other digital >media > > last a few decades. In the future the 1900s will probably be considered >a > > Dark Age ... > >We don't really know how long CDs will last. But it hardly matters: the >point >is that whatever is in active use will get copied and transcribed over and >over.
No we don't, but a good guess is "not very long" - CDs are quite delicate things. But the deciding factor will probably be storage. Even wax phonogrammes can last a century (at the very least) in a nice and quite museum, while even a runestone will wear down quickly if you use it as flooring. What's in active use will survive, sure. But the vast majority of info won't be, and if we suffer some sort of civilizational collapse enormous amounts of information will be lost. Andreas _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.