Whilst I have no doubt that we will lose much of the information stored electronically, I wonder whether it is really any different for information stored in any other format.

I frequently investigate problems with buildings built within the past ten years where nobody can find any of the documents associated with the production of the building elements, be it a specification, architectural drawings, shop drawings or even a maintenance manual outlining the nature of the particular building element.

Similarly, I am often flabbergasted by the lack of research to establish what has worked in the past ... and so architects and builders frequently try to reinvent the flashing, often unsuccessfully.

On a personal level, I have boxes of photocopies of useful references ... but frequently fail to refer to them because I don't remember that I have them.  Unless I spend a significant amount of time cataloguing every piece of information I acquire, I will always fail to remember it all when I need it.

I suspect that we will lose all but a small percentage of the electronic information we create ... just like we have lost all but a small percentage of much of the rest of the information which has been created this century.  Just because documents may be stored in a library or archive somewhere doesn't mean that they are still accessible to us if we do not know they are there.

So, does it really matter?

david