> bit rot : the tendency for digital information to degrade or become unusable over time. This kind of data degradation or corruption can make images and audio recordings distort and documents impossible to read or open.<p>I'm not a huge fan of this definition. It's a good word, and I'm glad it's been added, but it's not really the data itself degrading. Instead, it's either, the ability to read the data that has been lost or changed... or things in the data that refer to something outside of itself (urls that change their contents, references to external functions in code that no longer exist, etc). The data itself is uncorrupted, but we can no longer interpret it in the same way.<p>Unless, they're talking about actual physical degradation like floppy discs or CDs, in which case, carry on. I guess I just find the other definition more interesting.