Bits and bytes of thanks to @sally_j, @LibSkrat, @herodotusjr, and @LanceStuch for their help finding images for this comic!
Image credits:
Panel 1: Image of the Earth recovered by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project by NASA/LOIRP
Panel 2: Thesis [Image Glitching] by Richard Almond
Panel 3: Floppy Disk by Museum of Hartlepool
Panel 4: “Burned” DVD, microwaved to ensure total elimination of private data by Roman Solo
Panel 5: Floppy-Disk-1.44-Mb_FujiFilm-MF2HD_82374 -480×360 by Emilian Robert Vicol
Panel 7: When drives attack by Jonathan
Transcript after the jump.
What happens to a digital dream deferred?
Does it degrade
when a zero turns to one?
Or fully obsolesce
Nowhere to run?
Does it warp in extreme heat?
Or, without metadata,
it survives incomplete?
Maybe it gets lost
Files failing to load
Or does it explode?
Tags: digital preservation, dreams, poetry
August 2, 2012 at 10:36 am |
The optical disks are not destroyed in a NIST 800-88 approved manner. Burnination should reduce the media to ash in a, licensed incinerator; if RECORDS MANAGER SMASH, fragments should be .25 mm²; destruction of the surface should be done using an approved grinder (other sandwiches should only be used for Roll Based Access Control).
The only way to be 100% sure that digital media is unreadable is to have an urgent, unfunded need for the content.