Now you lot know I’m not very into IT stuff, but I was reading Scientific American and this really caught my imagination:
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Most cultural institutions and research laboratories still rely on magnetic tape to archive their collections. Hitachi recently announced that it has developed a medium that can outlast not only this old-school format but also CDs, DVDs, hard drives and MP3s.

The electronics giant partnered with Kyoto University’s Kiyotaka Miura to develop “semiperpetual” slivers of quartz glass that Hitachi says can preserve information for hundreds of millions of years with virtually no degradation.
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More at link:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=data-saved-quartz-glass-might-last-300-million-years

> can preserve information for hundreds of millions of years with virtually no degradation

Well that’s certainly a hefty improvement on anything else.

>The medium could be ideal for safekeeping a civilization’s most vital information, museum holdings or sacred texts.

Excellent. Just perfect for HF chat.

> can preserve information for hundreds of millions of years with virtually no degradation

Interesting. I was reading an article written by one of the bods in Aunty’s Archives department.

He basically said that the only reliable medium for archiving audio material was the LP record. Everything else suffered breakdown and degradation.

I learned recently that, some time ago, Aunty acquired a large batch of expensive, archive-quality, CDs which were meant to last for a good many years. They were all stored correctly in temperature and humidity-controlled rooms, etc. Sadly, the CDs are already beginning to fail.