CLOUD DATA STORAGE IS KILLING DATA IN OUR LIFETIME

When you travel to Egypt and have the first-hand experience with the pyramids, you’re left with a lasting experience. These structures have been around for more than six thousand years. The data they have reviewed has left us fascinated by the life of the people who lived then. 

Lost in the Cloud: The Endangered Fate of Our Data

Computers have been around for less time.  Most of us have been on these machines for less than twenty years.

We have generated more data with these machine than what has been around from the time of pyramid construction.

The computers brought with them more problems than solutions. They came to generate more data than we can store. When we look a few years back, we see the data we have lost through a computer crash, software update and hard disk crash. These events made previous data unreadable. Storage systems changed suddenly leaving us with an obsolete gadget that our new models of computers were unable to read. 

A few years ago we used to store our data on Floppy drive and Zip drives. Then came CD ROM. Followed closely by flask dish. Every time we got a new machine, the old storage gadget became obsolete. The data in it was lost or could not be read by the new high-tech machine.

Computers aside, music systems we had followed a similar path. The machines changed subsequently. The Cassette player would not play the vinyl records. The CD player would not play a cassette. The CD player would not play the flask disks or the Bluetooth and now music streaming. Where is all this leading us? Are we going to destroy all the data in our lifetime?

When we reflect hard on what has happened we realise that the digital age is a passing cloud. We have not been able to maintain data storage for twenty years let alone six thousand years to match the pyramid. Why has our generation failed to invent a stable method of data storage that will outlive us? 

The entrepreneurship in this world has invented cloud storage for our data. They assure us that this will be the future method of data storage. Every time you store data on the cloud, you input a password for data retrieval. This method operates with a password. What happens when one is deceased? Does it mean one will have to leave a will on passwords (God forbid)?

If the bible was saved in the cloud after it was written, we would not have had an opportunity to read it. The cloud password would have been lost. The Scrolls were the in thing then. Our libraries should be encouraged manually with little digitalisation. Digitalisation seems to work on temporally data storage. In another twenty years our machine will have evolved and unable to read the data we have today.

Some scientists are researching a way of storing data on DNA. They have discovered that everything will change but the DNA will remain the same. This way we could be able to store data forever. Every generation that will pass through this world will have a method of decoding DNA. They will be able to read our data.

Before this happens, store data on paper, drawing on rocks and if need be on scrolls. This will keep our data for the next generations. Otherwise, we risk being extinct to the next generations.

The next generations may never come to know what we used to do. Their gadgets will not be able to operate through our clouds. Maybe they will be storing their data on the stars.

Conclusion

The parting shot here is, watches will be here forever. They are older than computers and seem to remain constant. Buy your watch knowing that you will leave it to your children and your children's children.