Remember 8-track tapes. How many facilities can even read them anymore. It is incredible
how much data was transferred to tapes, which was subsequently lost in transition
to other forms of storage. Or how about those cartfuls of data on punch cards that
now sit in storage with no machines capable of reading them. What happens 10 years
from now when your computer is reading a storage crystal and your 5 1/4" floppies
or your 3 1/2" floppies or your CD's can't be read. The data center here despite attempts
to transfer data has lost more than it has stored over the years because of these
changes and it is backed up nightly. Then what about the random nuclear war that
may come our way.

How many of the songs of the 20's can you hear today because they were transferred
to CD-ROM and how many have been lost for ever as we underwent transitions from
records to tapes to CD's and everything in between. The only thing you hear today
is what the music moguls want you to hear. The vast majority of music from the past
has been lost forever.

We seem to think that the history of mankind's adventure on this world is one of
continuous achievement. While the general course has been progress, it has been
interrupted by long dark ages where only occasional information made it through to
the next upward swing. Our civilization is another Library of Alexandra waiting to
happen if we rely too heavily on our electronic gadgets to store our knowledge for us.