/lit/ - Literature

Lol at all the e-reader sóyboys in this thread
>IT'S BACKED UP BRO

Ummm sorry sweaty, I guess you hadn't heard about the cosmic rays? Well guess what, Earth is being bombarded by ionic particles from the Sun and outer space, and every now and then one will hit just right to flip a bit in your hard drive. All magnetic storage is at risk, including disks, USB, solid state, etc. Due to increasing sunspot activity and reduced absorption of the atmosphere this problem is increasing more and more, and likely limits the lifespan of most consumer electronics to 10-20 years.

This is why people who live in high elevation cities are always having their hard drive fail. It's also why the software and hardware in aircraft has to be written especially to be tolerant of these errors. But even at sea level you are not safe.

Furthermore, because of compressed and/or encrypted file formats used by e-books, it only takes a few off-by-one errors to make the data unreadable without significant effort. Before you are even halfway old, all your "backups" will have deteriorated into a sloppy mess.

BTW this means that on archaeological timescales, nothing digital will survive without constant maintenance. The only true way to transmit the contents of civilization to posterity is good quality physical writings, which can last thousands of years if well mode.