> A well preserved book that was printed five hundred
> years ago, can still be read today. It is doubtful that much of the
> electronic data that we have today will still be accessible fifty years
> from now.
Very true. The idea of getting rid of books overnight is ludicrous. Digital media are surprisingly perishable: disks rot, DVDs skip and scratch, hard-drives crash all the time, etc.
And coding and access constantly change -- a huge problem for videogames. Archivists are wrestling with the issue of how to preserve the very first videogames and electronic media.
Yes, eventually cheap portable eco-friendly reading devices will be the norm, but the tech is still three or four years away. And there's still a huge, massive fight over digital access -- because Google/Sony/Microsoft/global capitalism wants to lock down the texts forever.
-- DRR