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How bitrot ensures that our digital heritage will not disappear in the future, many novices are not very clear about this. In order to help you solve this problem, the following editor will explain it in detail. People with this need can come and learn. I hope you can get something.

How can you record or write down instructions that can be read and interpreted by people 10, 000 years later?

In 1992, a multidisciplinary research team sat down to answer this question, trying to create warning signs against radioactive contamination that stood the test of time. This study highlights a fundamental challenge we all face in long-term information retrieval-a phenomenon that Internet architect Vint Cerf calls "bit decay" (bit rot).

In 1979, the United States Congress authorized the construction of a waste isolation pilot plant (WIPP) a few miles outside the town of Carlsbad, New Mexico. WIPP aims to store defense-related radioactive waste in geologically stable salt deposits in the area. But of the many challenges facing the project, how to communicate the danger of buried waste to future generations is the trickiest.

Because of the radioactivity of the materials being processed, the team's task is to create warning "markers" that will not only stand the test of 10,000 years from now, but also 10,000 years from now when the means of language and even human communication may be unimaginably different, but also to ensure that humans can understand its message.

Designing these tags is a critical and difficult task for the WIPP research team. First of all, the tag needs to be durable. According to the team, they need to bear the "human tendency to destroy buildings." They need to convey to the future design languages that are present and may not appear in the future, or to societies that show very different cultural norms and expectations. They need to convey highly complex messages about the dangers of buried materials.

In other words, a simple "danger: do not enter" sign is simply not enough to convey the danger signal involved in the project. In addition, there is no way to print documents, digital files or "Googleable" to let future humans know more information.

As a result, the team, including conceptual artist Mike Brill, has developed a series of elegant markup concepts designed to transcend time, language and culture. and thousands of years later can still send a clear message: this is a dangerous place, a place to avoid being put into use. They conclude that stone, earth and art are more durable than the short-lived information storage media we currently rely on-and archaeologists and historians are well aware of this.

Spike Field. Concept: Mike Brill; Drawing: Safdar Abidi; Image Courtesy of BOSTI.

In the 21st century, the WIPP tag seems far away from our lives, but it soberly reminds us that in today's world of data explosion, we live under the illusion of "longevity of information" and "recoverability". With our ability to generate and store data exponentially, it is easy to assume that content on the Internet is retained online. However, whether this is the case or not-and I personally think that this is not the case-what really matters is our ability to read and use this information.

It is as if the information that exists on the Internet will exist forever and become a kind of collective unconsciousness.

This is what Vint Cerf calls "bit decay". In an interview with Esquire in 2008, he claimed that "for a hundred or a thousand years, the possibility of maintaining software continuity to explain old things is close to zero. Will you still find a projector for 8mm film? if the new software is not backward compatible, then we have actually lost this part of the message. I call it bit rot. This is a very serious problem." Over the next few years, he worked to promote the awakening of this awareness in today's society, as well as the concept of "digital Kraft paper" (digital vellum), as a way to ensure that digital information can be interpreted hundreds of years later.

But in the 21st century, neither "digital rot" nor "digital Kraft paper" is very attractive. It's as if we have acquiesced that the knowledge spread on the Internet will exist forever. Now, however, it is precisely because we can find the information we want so easily that it seems that we will not mind the problems of hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

This has had a serious impact on the future accessibility of all the information we produce on a daily basis. At the same time, it brings another question: how we will be seen and understood by future generations, even in our own lives. When the only way to rebuild someone's life is through a digital footprint, the information generated by the rules of Google, Microsoft and other tech giants, who determines what future generations think of us? Even if we really showed up? In the future, with deep fiction and virtual reality becoming more and more common, if this reality is "digitally rotten", how will we build the cornerstone of real reality?

Recently I received an unexpected package that reminded me of how difficult and urgent it is to preserve our digital footprints in this century. This package contains notes and notes from colleagues who worked in the same lab with me a few years ago. It also includes an old CD-ROM.

CD-ROM and Paper Archives. The picture is provided by Andrew Maynard.

CD-ROM is one of the old files I cleared out in the office. In December 1999, when I left the UK to work in the United States, I burned it, and it contained my research documents in the 1990s.

As a Mac user, I no longer use outdated computers like CD-ROM drives. But I managed to piece something together and found some new surprises from my career more than 20 years ago.

The first good news is that I still have access to some of the data I used to have-CD-ROM is not completely out of date. In other words, I have to admit that a few years ago, when I realized that I had little chance of cobbling together a certain way of reading, I threw away my floppy disk since the 1980s-but if I had used a CD-ROM in my most recent file storage, whether it was a 3.5-inch floppy disk or a 5.5-inch floppy disk, then my information has long since disappeared into the digital world.

The second good news is that I can still read files on CD-ROM. I still use applications like Microsoft Word and Synergy Software's Kaleidagraph to do my work, while the files I saved in previous versions in the 1990s are still readable. Thanks to Microsoft and Synergy Software for taking the issue of downward compatibility seriously!

However, even so, there are still a large number of files that are unreadable, either because I do not have access to the correct software, they are incompatible with the current version of the software, or the original package is no longer available at all. As a result, my data files, mathematical models, papers, reports and emails are all victims of bit decay. Unlike written records-I still have lab books from the early 1990s that anyone can read-these digital archives won't even last decades.

Of course, there may be a lot of rubbish in my files. To be sure, in the past 20 years, I have not regretted that these contents are not easy to read. However, if someone wants to use these to rebuild my work, or to use them to understand my identity as a young researcher, they will be stumped.

For me, this is part of the potential danger of bit decay. We are surrounded by so much data and so many ways to store and retrieve that it is easy to ignore things that are not immediately within reach. What we think is important is eliminating the mundane and detailed aspects of our lives, or rather, our application provider determines what is important. It doesn't seem to be a big problem now. But in 50 to 80 years' time, when your children and grandchildren try to piece together your life, there will be huge loopholes in the pieces of information that big technology allows.

For a century or more, who would say that anyone can read your email, social media messages, elaborate documents, or digital diaries?

When you consider using cuneiform, cave paintings, and other forms of highly lasting recording media. Biographers and historians have access to a wealth of written information that helps to piece together the lives of people hundreds or even tens of thousands of years ago.

Unless we are happy that the tech giants control and bury our digital heritage, we need to think more carefully about bit decay.

Ironically, these earliest forms of information recording have more in common with WIPP tags than digital technology. Previous generations-because they had no other choice-mainly used durable media to record, and they did not need to use complex, time-tested symbols to interpret the contents of records, which is the benefit of cultural mobility. Therefore, we know more about them than future generations know about us.

Fortunately, the potential "bit decay" problem is improving. Standardized digital formats such as PDF and JPG make long-term accessibility easier, while open standards for digital content make it easier for software developers to ensure file readability. However, if you use a proprietary format or platform to process your digital information-even if it is mature-you may feel its decay and disappearance one day. Maybe not now or a few years from now. But we all know that companies with these proprietary standards will not exist forever. Even if they exist, they control the user's ability to access data. Imagine a future version of Microsoft Office, which doesn't allow you to open old files (or require access fees); or if Adobe decides that free PDF readers don't belong to their future business model; or if Google services eventually disappear behind the paid zone.

At present, these situations do not seem very likely to happen-at least for the foreseeable future. But if we don't want to disappear in the silence of bit decay, we need to be smarter, and we need to think about how our digital lives become "recoverable". This is not particularly difficult, we just need to learn more about how and where to store important information. This may mean reintroducing time-proven technologies such as pens and paper, or, like the WIPP team, moving to meaningful symbol life extension. It can even be as ambitious and forward-looking as the hi.co archives, which are etched on a series of 2 x 2-inch nickel plates and claim a shelf life of 10, 000 years.

No matter what kind of storage we choose, unless we are happy to let tech giants control and bury our digital heritage, we need to think more carefully about bit decay and how to preserve what is important to us in our increasingly digital lives. Otherwise, we are all likely to become digital ghosts, or worse: the tiniest traces of life are alive and erased, rotting into nothing.

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