Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/08/17

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Subject: Read CDs in Future
From: Michael Reichmann <michael.reichmann@alphanet.net>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 09:43:26 -0400

>Do you think that 200 years from now people will have technology that =
can
>read your CDs?  Can you read an 8 inch floppy that was made maybe 10 =
years
>ago?   Or even a 5 1/4 floppy?
>Dan C.

Seriously? -- of course not.  But, I expect that as time passes I will =
be able to transfer the digital files to ever larger media.  For =
example, within the next 12 months it's expected that DVD-ROM drives =
will become available with between 4-8 GB per disk.  Who knows what will =
become available over the coming years?  The point is that there is =
always a decent overlap period during which both old and new mediums are =
currently available.

CD, for example, is now such a ubiquitious medium (tens of millions of =
drives -- hundreds of millions of disks) that I think there'll be little =
difficulty reading them for many years to come.  (Of course DVD is =
backwardly compatible which will perpetuate this even further).

I'm more concerned though whether anyone will be able to recognize =
Photoshop 4 format in the year 2198 AD.  Will Photoshop 84.2 be =
backwardly compatible with Photoshop 4.0 :-)

Michael