The advent of the Internet as an easily accessible way to preserve and utilize digital information has led to large increase in funding in order to generate more digital information. While the expansion of digital information is implicitly believed to be a positive thing by individuals and institutions, both corporate and government, involved in the expansion of digital content, this attitude overlooks certain shortcomings inherent in digital information. Digital information may not be as permanent as once believed, due to old technologies becoming obsolete, difficulties in accessing old media, and web sites disappearing. Since there has been no precedent for this type of technology, there is no guarantee that our current digital information is reliable, or will even be able to be accessed by future generations. (more…)