<story><title>Kepler&apos;s 400-year-old sunspot sketches helped solve a modern mystery</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/how-keplers-400-year-old-sunspot-sketches-helped-solve-a-modern-mystery/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dylan604</author><text>We have analog records from thousands of years ago, and we still have the technology to use them. I have digital formats from ~25 years ago that can no longer be read. I think the longevity speaks for itself.&lt;p&gt;Water and fire are equally destructive to digital or analog. Library of Congress has chosen analog vinyl for long term storage over any digital format. I think you&amp;#x27;re putting way too much faith in digital and totally discounting analog.</text></item><item><author>stouset</author><text>&amp;gt; Physical records don’t need anything to exist and be read&lt;p&gt;Surely you’re joking. Physical records are notoriously fragile. They default to having a single copy and require intentional effort to create and distribute duplicates. They are frequently lost to fires, fading, physical decay, and even just being misplaced for generations.&lt;p&gt;Digital records have their own issues, but implying with a straight face that the default state of physical records is persistence is a bridge too far.</text></item><item><author>pleb_nz</author><text>But are digital records really more resilient to catastrophic societal and global changes? Physical records don’t need anything to exist and be read and only time and simple resources to duplicate compared with digital.</text></item><item><author>efdee</author><text>I think that yes, they will. Generally these historical records exist because some people went through the effort of preserving them for all these years. I feel this effort is a lot lower when your records are digital and infinitely duplicatable.</text></item><item><author>dylan604</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m constantly amazed at these historical records still exist. Kepler&amp;#x27;s et al are one thing, but some of the much older from China are also impressive that the information exists today and is still somehow accessible. Now that everything is digital, will they still be available in the future to the same extent that these older analog records have been</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adrian_b</author><text>The majority of the very old records that still exist are those that have been carved in stone or bronze, or pressed in burned ceramic.&lt;p&gt;Besides these, there have been huge amounts of written records that have used more perishable materials, like plant leaves, plant bark, wood, papyrus, wax etc.&lt;p&gt;Almost all of those have been lost.&lt;p&gt;In the past, carving stone or bronze was hard work, so it was avoided, except for the most important records. Also today, there are technologies to make digital records that could survive for many millennia, but due to their high cost they are used even less than stone carving was used in the ancient world.</text></comment>
<story><title>Kepler&apos;s 400-year-old sunspot sketches helped solve a modern mystery</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/how-keplers-400-year-old-sunspot-sketches-helped-solve-a-modern-mystery/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dylan604</author><text>We have analog records from thousands of years ago, and we still have the technology to use them. I have digital formats from ~25 years ago that can no longer be read. I think the longevity speaks for itself.&lt;p&gt;Water and fire are equally destructive to digital or analog. Library of Congress has chosen analog vinyl for long term storage over any digital format. I think you&amp;#x27;re putting way too much faith in digital and totally discounting analog.</text></item><item><author>stouset</author><text>&amp;gt; Physical records don’t need anything to exist and be read&lt;p&gt;Surely you’re joking. Physical records are notoriously fragile. They default to having a single copy and require intentional effort to create and distribute duplicates. They are frequently lost to fires, fading, physical decay, and even just being misplaced for generations.&lt;p&gt;Digital records have their own issues, but implying with a straight face that the default state of physical records is persistence is a bridge too far.</text></item><item><author>pleb_nz</author><text>But are digital records really more resilient to catastrophic societal and global changes? Physical records don’t need anything to exist and be read and only time and simple resources to duplicate compared with digital.</text></item><item><author>efdee</author><text>I think that yes, they will. Generally these historical records exist because some people went through the effort of preserving them for all these years. I feel this effort is a lot lower when your records are digital and infinitely duplicatable.</text></item><item><author>dylan604</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m constantly amazed at these historical records still exist. Kepler&amp;#x27;s et al are one thing, but some of the much older from China are also impressive that the information exists today and is still somehow accessible. Now that everything is digital, will they still be available in the future to the same extent that these older analog records have been</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>squeaky-clean</author><text>Can they actually no longer be read? Or would it just require a few hundred dollars spent on eBay?</text></comment>