Like I have said before, digital media and file formats will be a serious challenge in the future.

Dr. Jerome P. McDonough of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne (UIUC) warns of a digital dark age because of digital media not being as resilient as physical media. He teaches graduate studies on Library and Information Science.

A very good article indeed.

The CBC is reporting on how digital media is unstable compared to older media.

This is also discussed on Slashdot.

Popular Mechanics has an extensive article titled The Digital Ice Age. It discussed how present information can be lost for future generations.

Also discussed on Slashdot. 

Here is another worrying statistic with implications on the distant future.

As many as one third of users of digital cameras do not back up their photos. 

If the ancient Egyptians or Greeks did not build their temples of stone, and used perishable materials, what would our extent of knowledge of them be? 

At least we have the other two thirds ... 

Regarding the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, one has to notice that the level of detail that the rest of the world had of this crisis is amazing compared to other natural disasters.

This page lists some successful digital archeology "digs" or "excavations", where old software or hardware, or both were revived

In my Introduction to Digital Archeology article, I discussed how our present state of society and civilization would be perceived by future generations of digital archeologists.

In this article, you will find a collection of links on how best to preserve digital information in its various forms.

As our civilization moves to almost all digital forms of storage and archiving of various aspects of life, it is important that this history is preserved for the future generations in a way that would accurately reflect how this civilization really is. This article details some of the difficulties that would face future archeologists, and how to get over them now, for the sake of the future.