Is plain text the best way to preserve digital information for future research?

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@ruenoak I think this is “bit rot”? I often wonder what haven’t to ask this knowledge we create everyday... will “digital archaeoligists” even be able to find useful information? How do you open an 80 yr old excel spreadsheet?

@gritnot Yes bit rot is a really problem with storage media, I deal with this in my work. But unreadable formats are becoming an alarming issue as times goes on. You only have to go back to the 90's or even less to run into these issues. We are in the informational age and creating it faster than ever, and so much of it is bound in Proprietary formats and containers we may never be able recover this information in the future.

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