The Dangers Of Short-Term Thinking On Information

Archivists, historians, librarians and some of the savvier people in the business world are sounding the alarm about an impending “digital dark age.” Information that is stored digitally, it turns out, is in many respects more fragile than the printed page that it is supposed to replace. The digital medium may not physically deteriorate, although that can happen too, but if it becomes unreadable – because of software or hardware obsolescence, for example – that can amount to the same thing. The problem of long-term preservation of information is a major and largely unrecognized problem, writes Barclay T. Blair in his Today’s General Counsel column, and it’s one that general counsel are in a good position to address.