TRANSLATIONS - Technology Information

Emedia Professional, Dec, 1999 by Stephen F. Nathans

As we entrust the dearest artifacts of our culture to CD, we're placing tremendous faith in the continuity of current computing, well beyond the impending perils of Y2K. Even if we're still using computers when our pressed CD-ROM or CD-R media go to judgment, who's to say those late-century machines will still be able to read the media as they are written? The 5.25-inch floppy was the standard for removable storage less than 15 years ago; few of us, I suspect, can immediately think of a place to play one back today.

Even if the media do still work physically, and the computers still recognize them, who's to say the software we need to decode the material will still be found where you try to play back your discs? If you imagine our minds as reading programs--we and the cultural contexts in which we've come of age--how much more capable will tomorrow's 2099 PC (or equivalent) and its bundled software be of reading today's CD-R, than today's Euro-Americans are of comprehending Mesa Verde-vintage 1100 C.E. petroglyphs?

I see this as a real problem, and have yet to encounter a satisfying solution. I've seen three steps in the right direction, however, which leave me encouraged that we might just get out of this yet.

The first is Kodak's CD-PROM, an Orange Booksteeped innovation that allows pressed CD-ROM content, such as the application software for reading images on Picture CD, to exist alongside user-recorded CD-R content on a part-pressed, part-recordable hybrid disc [See Robert A. Starrett's CD Writer, September 1999]. There's also Mitsui's AutoProtect CD-R media (discussed by Starrett in his November column) and Ricoh's as yet unnamed offering, which provide automated hard drive backup (Mitsui with CD-R, Ricoh with CD-RW) via a disc that contains both the application and storage space for the data to be archived. Mitsui's AutoProtect installs a driver on the user's hard drive which powers its custom backup solution; Ricoh's simply runs packet-writing software in the background to perform the automated backup. Both can write a seamless image over one or multiple discs as needed. What's especially intriguing about these products (although they aren't really designed to be used this way) is that they create the rare packet-written CD that can play back anywhere it's placed.

Technologically, these are great strides, and portend real promise that the hard drive you back up today may actually be retrievable whenever you want it back.

But these products only guarantee the physical feasibility of such restorations. Getting it all back online isn't enough. Nowhere today is the promise that the material will be readable as written. Where are the retrieval, indexing, image management, and playback programs that will make all the material truly retrievable? Where is IMR with its PROM-based Alchemy Archive disc? Where is Adobe's Appendable Acrobat? Granted, that's a lot of information when you throw those applications in, and if it's too much for CD-R, maybe this is where writable DVD steps in, as the next-generation application delivery mechanism that one-ups the old standby with enough capacity to fit everything in--the application and the data. When it's all on the same disc--the data we intend to preserve and all the applications we'll need to access it--then I'll be satisfied that our cultural assets will truly be safe. In the absence of such assurances, CD and DVD may not be the right rocks to write them on.