"Gordon Moat" wrote in message
...
Imaging formats change all the time. I would imagine some really early
video
might be entirely unreadable at some point in the near future.

These video formats are analog and require a specific mechanical device to
read. Reproduction of that mechanical device may be difficult. However, if
they are lucky someone digitized it and it exists somewhere. They have
services which do this sort of thing you know.

JPEG is already slated for changes.

So, you can still read GIF files and other "obsolete" types. Why should jpeg
die just because it is changed in the future?

MPEG is also an evolving standard. TIFF is somewhat stable,
though there was a variation that Adobe used once that caused some
problems.

All these engineers trying to do more will continue to evolve file
formats.
Software of the future might not be able to read older files. While
something
on the internet might still be found, even through some like the web
archive
organization, the reality is that usually someone needs to pay to keep
information on any server.

My point is that given the spec, and given typical programming tools you can
read the bits that the file is encoded with. Reading a bitmap or a jpeg is
unlikely to become a lost art. Binary data is here to stay and it is easy to
work with it. It has the advantage that you can read it and duplicate it
exactly. This frees you in principle from relying on obsolete, no longer
readable media - as long as someone wants to keep it, it is easy for them to
do so. Certainly there will be stuff that no one keeps. There always is. The
majority of paperbacks from the 50's, 60's and 70's have all gone into the
trash. No one is crying over them or saying that paper is obsolete. Where
are the mountains of vinyl records that were produced throughout the last
century? 8 track tapes? Prints from instamatic cameras? glass plates? The
libraries at Alexandria? Most everything is in huge landfills now. And
people were happy to put it there.

Obviously some more important information will survive. Family histories
are
another thing, and it would not surprise me to hear of many losses in the
future. What is the incentive to keep things the same as they are
digitally
now?

Gordon Moat

The sky, it is falling.

-J