Somewhat related... I'm starting to think the fear we had 20 years ago about formats going obsolete is largely overblown. I know for sure that SOME formats will become unusable in another few decades, but the major things we all use for this type of stuff will pretty much never die. I bet we'll be able to open a GIF, JPG, PNG, MP4 in 100 years just as easily as we can today. There's just way too many of these things around now.<p>I know libraries and museums are full of oddball things like wire recorders and wax cylinders that are used as examples, but I'm just not sure that's applicable to most (not all) digital files now. I just can't imagine there will ever come a day where we'll say "It's time to convert these 1 billion PNGs we have saved to the latest greatest format or we'll never be able to use them". Hopefully I'll be alive in 30 years to see if I'm wrong :-)