So much is still lost, gone and unretrievable. Software changes, sites that close with no/little notice, people deciding what does matter and what does not based on what seemed to matter at that time. I've lost quite a lot of what I have written over the years I've been online. The Wayback Machine has some of it. Not all. Of course, not every word, thought, image, or news has value worth keeping for however long. But, once its gone it isn't likely to be found again.

It is still funny, in an interesting way, that all of it, saved or not, is just code. The science of having so much created based on 1 and 0 is still amazing.

In the 01990s, when we first started really talking about the issues of digital storage media and file format obsolescence, it was almost as if we were caught with our pants down. We hadn’t truly been thinking about this as a problem; we as a civilization weren’t prepared for the challenges it posed. We soon realized, however, that digital documents have their own complex fragility and maintaining access to digitally encoded information over the long-term may be more challenging than the analog. There was a flurry of activity across the globe, and while the topic faded from the headlines, the flurry of activity continued and has slowly and steadily gained momentum.

Source: #nodigitaldarkage? — Blog of the Long Now - Heather Ryan.