Cyber Ark, Rosetta Stone or Print?

In the last few decades we have witnessed two related processes: the increasingly visible inclusion of electronic devices in our everyday lives, and the rush to digital formats. Institutions, organisations and private companies have recently1 begun to convert their own archives into digital formats. Moreover the general public has also started to convert personal data into digital formats: documents, music, movies, drawings and photos have been converted from their original formats into bit-streams in digital media. People used to believe (and many still do) that digital formats were the ultimate formats for storing information indefinitely. The idea that texts, images and more in general data can be perpetuated by converting them into digital form is popular and widely supported. As a result, a significant amount of our documents and data relies on digital technology. But is digital technology really suitable for long-term preservation? And are electronic devices, which are required in order to access information stored in digital formats, durable enough to guarantee future access to this information? If not, what can we do to overcome this problem?