Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: di'mond executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech are yet.
Speaker 1: You know, I thought it might be interesting to talk
Speaker 1: about how data can both be easy to lose and
Speaker 1: hard to lose. It's a paradise, but really this is
Speaker 1: all about the media upon which we store data and
Speaker 1: how that media can pose various challenges. Now, first up,
Speaker 1: let's just talk about the concept of obsolescence. So as
Speaker 1: our technology, our language, our culture, as all these things
Speaker 1: evolve and we discover new ways to commit information to
Speaker 1: different types of media, we often leave the older methods behind.
Speaker 1: And for example, very few people are recording audio to
Speaker 1: wax cylinders today. For example, you know Thomas Edison did it,
Speaker 1: but you don't see people doing it now, at least
Speaker 1: not outside of you know, historical demonstrations and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. The days of storing info magnetically onto strips
Speaker 1: of metal, like we saw at the end of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, that's pretty far behind us too, although magnetic
Speaker 1: tape is built on the same principle. But before we
Speaker 1: use tape, we used wire, not that frequently, but it
Speaker 1: was one of those things that kind of paved the
Speaker 1: way toward magnetic tape. Now, over time, all media will
Speaker 1: ultimately go obsolete, either because the stuff we recorded upon
Speaker 1: has worn out, the actual physical stuff has broken, or
Speaker 1: because we've lost the ability to retrieve information from that
Speaker 1: type of media. And that inability to retrieve can range
Speaker 1: from the technical to just our knowledge of how to
Speaker 1: do it. So let's take a moment to consider something
Speaker 1: that is pretty far removed from modern technology unless you
Speaker 1: watch stargate, and that is hieroglyphs. So thousands of years ago,
Speaker 1: the people of ancient Egypt developed a writing system that
Speaker 1: was complicated, to say the least. So our Latin alphabet,
Speaker 1: the one that we use in English, for example, has
Speaker 1: twenty six characters write twenty six letters in the alphabet,
Speaker 1: and hieroglyphs had hundreds of characters, like a thousand or more. Now,
Speaker 1: some of the characters in ancient Egypt represented basic phonemes.
Speaker 1: Phonemes are sounds within a language, right, like would be
Speaker 1: a phoneeme or like these are basic sounds. But other
Speaker 1: characters in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, they represented entire words, or
Speaker 1: at least parts of words. Some represented stills, so not
Speaker 1: necessarily parts of words like you would think, but a
Speaker 1: syllable that was common in ancient Egypt. But over the millennia,
Speaker 1: the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs faded from Egyptian culture.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of reasons for this. I mean,
Speaker 1: the style of writing down information changed from hieroglyphs to
Speaker 1: like demonic writing, and beyond Also, you had folks like
Speaker 1: you know, Europeans, like Greeks and Romans, who were invading
Speaker 1: Egypt and changing things and disrupting Egyptian culture significantly. By
Speaker 1: the time we got a few centuries into the common era,
Speaker 1: pretty much no one knew how to read the hieroglyphs
Speaker 1: of ancient Egypt anymore. So we had all this knowledge
Speaker 1: stored in various places and no way to retrieve that knowledge.
Speaker 1: It appeared as though we had lost all of it,
Speaker 1: or that we had, due to some misconceptions, completely miss
Speaker 1: interpreted that knowledge. So by the time we got into
Speaker 1: the medieval era, there was this prevailing hypothesis that the
Speaker 1: Egyptian hieroglyphs were symbolic in meaning, And by that I
Speaker 1: mean that the images that the Egyptians used were thought
Speaker 1: of to be direct symbols of whatever the message was.
Speaker 1: So let's say you had images of a boat and
Speaker 1: a snake, then you might be led to think that
Speaker 1: what you're looking at must be an allegorical story about
Speaker 1: snakes on a boat, possibly starring Samuel L. Jackson. But no,
Speaker 1: the symbols used weren't meant to represent exactly what they
Speaker 1: looked like. They represented elements of a language. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you want to understand what I'm saying, our letter
Speaker 1: S looks kind of like a snake, right, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean snake. When you see the letter S, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean snake. It could be the beginning of the
Speaker 1: word snake. Obviously that begins with S, but it could
Speaker 1: mean anything. It represents the S sound, which is found
Speaker 1: in lots of words, not just snake. And the hieroglyphs
Speaker 1: were similar, but no one had a document that matched
Speaker 1: hieroglyphs to some other known language so that someone could
Speaker 1: actually decipher the symbols. So it just seemed to be,
Speaker 1: you know, all these icons that the meaning had been
Speaker 1: completely lost. But then came Napoleon Ponaparte and his armies
Speaker 1: invaded Egypt toward the end of the eighteenth century, and
Speaker 1: in the process the armies happened across something incredibly important,
Speaker 1: and it would later be called the Rosetta Stone. Now,
Speaker 1: the Rosetta Stone itself is a type of monument, and
Speaker 1: there are carvings on the monument that represent an official
Speaker 1: dynastic decree. The carvings are in three different written languages.
Speaker 1: So at the base of the monument you have the
Speaker 1: carving in ancient Greek, above that is Demotic that is
Speaker 1: an Egyptian language that followed the High language, and at
Speaker 1: the top are hieroglyphs. And since all three carvings represented
Speaker 1: the same decree, this gave experts the opportunity to finally
Speaker 1: begin deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, and so began the long process
Speaker 1: of uncovering lost knowledge. And this was helped by subsequent
Speaker 1: discoveries of similar decrees, so that we, over time were
Speaker 1: able to understand what these hieroglyphs actually stood for. We
Speaker 1: understood that it was a written language that wasn't just
Speaker 1: purely symbolic. Now, my point in telling the story is
Speaker 1: that we have to remind ourselves that while we have
Speaker 1: ways to record knowledge. It would be foolish for us
Speaker 1: to assume that any way that we use is permanent,
Speaker 1: because we've got plenty of examples of knowledge being lost
Speaker 1: in the past, whether it's because people forgot how to
Speaker 1: access that knowledge, or maybe the knowledge was based in
Speaker 1: folklore and the people that were the stewards of that
Speaker 1: knowledge were wiped out or assimilated and the knowledge was lost,
Speaker 1: or maybe the physical copies, if it was like a
Speaker 1: written language, maybe the physical copies were lost. And a
Speaker 1: shout out to the late great Library of Alexandria, which
Speaker 1: I should add kind of faded away, not just because
Speaker 1: the famous fire set by Julius Caesar's forces, though that
Speaker 1: clearly was a catastrophic event, but also there was a
Speaker 1: long period in which leaders were cracking down on scholars
Speaker 1: because well, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so
Speaker 1: a lot of knowledge has got to be absolutely deadly, right.
Speaker 1: But anyway, let's skip ahead to the modern era. So
Speaker 1: even today we run the risk of losing access to
Speaker 1: information because we no longer make the stuff, what plays
Speaker 1: the media that we used in the old days, or
Speaker 1: at least in many cases, it is getting really tricky
Speaker 1: to track down the components that can retrieve data from
Speaker 1: those types of media. Right, you might be able to
Speaker 1: find old working equipment that can access certain types of
Speaker 1: stuff that otherwise we no longer can access. But it's
Speaker 1: rare that you're gonna find someone make a new version
Speaker 1: of that. It's not impossible. It's not like we've lost
Speaker 1: all ability to It's just that unless there is a
Speaker 1: pressing financial benefit to creating that kind of stuff, no
Speaker 1: one's going to bother to do it. Because you know,
Speaker 1: it's expensive to produce older types of technologies, and unless
Speaker 1: there's a financial incentive, no one's going to do it.
Speaker 1: It's had to say so. There's also the danger that
Speaker 1: the media we rely upon could wear out and deteriorate
Speaker 1: over time. So, for example, let's consider celluloid or film.
Speaker 1: Cinematic film degrades over time, particularly if it's in a
Speaker 1: hot and moist environment. And you might have heard about
Speaker 1: some filmmakers storing prints of their movies or masters of
Speaker 1: their movies in old salt mines such as the one
Speaker 1: that's below Hutchinson, Kansas in the United States. These subterranean
Speaker 1: spaces maintain a constant temperature of around sixty eight fahrenheit
Speaker 1: or twenty celsius, and they have a low humidity somewhere
Speaker 1: between like forty to forty five percent humidity. Of course,
Speaker 1: movies are not the only things stored in those minds.
Speaker 1: That in fact, we got the idea because of the
Speaker 1: story of the monument men who ended up finding lots
Speaker 1: of stolen art from various parts of Europe that the
Speaker 1: Nazis had collected and stored in salt mines. We ended
Speaker 1: up kind of using the same idea because it's a
Speaker 1: great way to preserve stuff. If you otherwise, it's in
Speaker 1: danger of deterioration. Also, we have to acknowledge that while
Speaker 1: it's a great way to preserve stuff, there's a tragedy
Speaker 1: here because we're also removing it right from us. You know,
Speaker 1: we're storing it and we're preserving it, But to what
Speaker 1: end if you can't access it, then it doesn't really
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of questions. There are philosophical questions.
Speaker 1: If you have a priceless work of art stored in
Speaker 1: assault mind and no one can go there, is it
Speaker 1: the same as not having it at all. Now, in
Speaker 1: the case of film, a lot of studios will actually
Speaker 1: use those master recordings. When they want to do a
Speaker 1: remastered version of the film they want to release it
Speaker 1: on say like Blu ray or something, they'll go to
Speaker 1: the original print that's stored in as salt mine and
Speaker 1: they'll pull from that. But yeah, there's lots of other
Speaker 1: stuff besides just film down there, anything that needs a
Speaker 1: controlled environment in order to stop or at least slow deterioration. Now,
Speaker 1: magnetic tape is another important storage method, and we've been
Speaker 1: using magnetic tape as storage since the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 1: around nineteen fifty one or so, and again the basic
Speaker 1: principle behind it dates back to the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: That was when we were using magnetic wire. But whether
Speaker 1: it's real to real tape, or cassettes or VHS tapes,
Speaker 1: we've relied on this methodology to store all sorts of information,
Speaker 1: from computer information to music in the case of like
Speaker 1: the cassette tapes of the eighties nineties or the VHS videotapes,
Speaker 1: all sorts of info we have committed to magnetic tape,
Speaker 1: and a lot of companies still rely on magnetic tape
Speaker 1: for long term storage and backups. When I use long
Speaker 1: term storage, i'm speaking relatively as we will see now
Speaker 1: some older forms of magnetic tape are largely obsolete because
Speaker 1: the devices we'd use to read the data from them
Speaker 1: are out of production. You might find a working device
Speaker 1: here or there, but they can be pretty rare, and
Speaker 1: being mechanical in nature, they will eventually require maintenance or
Speaker 1: they'll stop working. And when you're talking about this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, often you're talking about things that have parts
Speaker 1: that no one's making anymore, so it becomes very challenging
Speaker 1: to keep them in good working order because there's a
Speaker 1: limited supply of components you can use to make replacements
Speaker 1: when something breaks down. On top of all that, magnetic
Speaker 1: information itself can degrade over time, actually can degrade really
Speaker 1: quickly if it's in the presence of a strong magnetic field,
Speaker 1: which is why as a kid I was told never
Speaker 1: to bring a magnet close to a computer or computer
Speaker 1: discs because you could actually corrupt information that's stored on
Speaker 1: those devices because the magnet would realign the magnetic components
Speaker 1: that were on this plastic film, or in the case
Speaker 1: of a computer, a raid on a platter inside the
Speaker 1: hard disk drive. Now, on average, if stored in decent conditions,
Speaker 1: magnetic tape typically will retain data from anywhere between ten
Speaker 1: to twenty years. When stored in prime conditions like in
Speaker 1: that salt mine, for example, you might stretch it to
Speaker 1: around thirty years. So magnetic tape can hold on to
Speaker 1: data for a while, but certainly not indefinitely. It will
Speaker 1: sooner or later degrade to a point where the information
Speaker 1: will be corrupted or irretrievable. Now, on a similar note,
Speaker 1: let's talk floppy disks. So when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: our Apple two E computer had a five and a
Speaker 1: quarter inch floppy disk drive. These were not the first
Speaker 1: floppy disks. There were older ones. There were larger ones.
Speaker 1: IBM created eight inch floppy disks for example. And the
Speaker 1: discs that I was familiar with back when I was
Speaker 1: using the Apple to E were these plastic envelopes, and
Speaker 1: the envelopes were covering a disc of magnetic film on
Speaker 1: the inside, and it was on this magnetic disc that
Speaker 1: you could save and retreat data. And I actually had
Speaker 1: to look this up because I could not remember it myself.
Speaker 1: But the original five and a quarter inch floppy disks
Speaker 1: could hold up to ninety kilobytes of data. That's when
Speaker 1: they were first created. So that's just ninety kilobytes. But
Speaker 1: over time, you know, engineers improved the technology. They increased
Speaker 1: the capacity of floppy discs. Typically, they did this by
Speaker 1: creating more precise read write heads so they could store
Speaker 1: data in smaller physical sizes, which meant you could cram
Speaker 1: more of it onto the same sized disc. They also
Speaker 1: figured out how to multilayer discs, so that increased storage
Speaker 1: as well. I think, you know, some discs maxed out
Speaker 1: at around seven hundred and twenty kilobytes, so significantly more
Speaker 1: than ninety, but still way less than what we use today.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to talk more about floppy disks and
Speaker 1: other forms of storage and why all these different types
Speaker 1: have kind of a limited shelf life of one span
Speaker 1: or another. But before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Okay, we're back, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about floppy discs. Well, my parents write novels, and so
Speaker 1: my dad's first books, which were written in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: they were written on that old Apple two E computer,
Speaker 1: and he would save chapters of his books to floppy discs.
Speaker 1: Each novel would take up several discs, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: around a dozen or so, I can't quite remember. I
Speaker 1: remember we had disk holders that would hold like maybe
Speaker 1: three of his novels, because that's how many discs would
Speaker 1: be taken up just by storing chapters onto them. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if he actually still owns those floppy discs,
Speaker 1: but I imagine that even if he does, he doesn't
Speaker 1: have any way to check and see if the data
Speaker 1: is still there or not. He would need an Apple
Speaker 1: to E or an emulator to simulate an Apple to
Speaker 1: E on another machine. Plus he would have to have
Speaker 1: a floppy disk drive connected to whatever computer he was
Speaker 1: using in order to try and read those disks. And
Speaker 1: floppy disk drives are not completely gone. You can still
Speaker 1: find them. They are increasingly rare, however, so it's easy
Speaker 1: to imagine that a day will come when anything stored
Speaker 1: on discs like that, like my dad's books, will just
Speaker 1: become lost simply because no one makes the stuff capable
Speaker 1: of reading it anymore. And the stuff that already exists
Speaker 1: will eventually break down, and you know, the actual magnetic
Speaker 1: information on the discs will degrade over time too, just
Speaker 1: like with magnetic tape. Eventually you'll have some of those
Speaker 1: magnetic particles move out of alignment. That's going to corrupt
Speaker 1: your data. I know I keep saying data and data.
Speaker 1: I know I do that. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: do that, and I can't predict when it happens. It
Speaker 1: just does. I apologize for it, though, because I know
Speaker 1: it drives some of you crazy, and my apologies. It
Speaker 1: just happens anyway. Those particles will move out of alignment,
Speaker 1: the information gets corrupted, So yeah, switch to information there,
Speaker 1: and then you can't retrieve it anymore. So that can
Speaker 1: happen too. Even if you have a working computer system
Speaker 1: that could theoretically pull that information off the disc, sometimes
Speaker 1: the information on the disc itself will become corrupt. Now,
Speaker 1: we also have to keep in mind that media that
Speaker 1: we still use today because hardly. I mean, people do
Speaker 1: still use floppy disks depending on the situation, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty rare. But even the stuff that we do use today,
Speaker 1: eventually that's going to become obsolete too. Just a few
Speaker 1: years ago, compact discs were the go to for data storage,
Speaker 1: at least for personal computers, though a lot of enterprises
Speaker 1: would continue to rely on magnetic tape for more long
Speaker 1: term backups, and compact discs are a type of optical storage,
Speaker 1: meaning that Rather than using magnetism to align tiny particles
Speaker 1: on a physical surface, we're using lasers to write and
Speaker 1: to read from these discs. The information is stored in
Speaker 1: water called pits and lands, pits being a designated pit
Speaker 1: in the surface, and lands being the spaces between pits.
Speaker 1: Though rewriteable CDs actually kind of use foggy and clear
Speaker 1: sections that are very very tiny, you wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to see them with the naked eye. Now, compact discs
Speaker 1: allow us to create a more dense storage system, so
Speaker 1: we could put way more information on a single CD
Speaker 1: than we could with stuff like floppy discs. Now, Unlike
Speaker 1: cassettes and floppy disks, optical discs are not affected by magnetism.
Speaker 1: So if you did bring a powerful magnet close to
Speaker 1: a bunch of floppy disks or cassette tapes or anything
Speaker 1: that uses magnetic storage, you would scramble the information on
Speaker 1: there because the powerful magnet would realign the magnetic particles
Speaker 1: that are on the tape. But optical discs don't have
Speaker 1: magnetic particles, so they would be immune to that kind
Speaker 1: of interference. However, this does not mean that optical discs
Speaker 1: last forever, so there are many layers on a compact disc.
Speaker 1: Same thing with DVDs and blue rays. By the way,
Speaker 1: there are several layers involved, and these layers can have
Speaker 1: chemical reactions in them, and those chemical reactions can cause
Speaker 1: those layers to degrade over time. So like a CD
Speaker 1: that's stored in a very humid and warm place, like
Speaker 1: if people had stored their CDs, their music CDs inside
Speaker 1: their car and the summer in Georgia, they might find
Speaker 1: that those CDs don't last that long, like they might
Speaker 1: last a few seasons, but eventually they degrade, and they will.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're in a hot and humid environment,
Speaker 1: then a disc is going to degrade faster, not like instantaneously,
Speaker 1: but it will start to degrade faster than it would
Speaker 1: if you stored it in a cooler, dry place. And
Speaker 1: that outer layer on a CD, that's the clear layer, right,
Speaker 1: It's protective and it's clear so that a laser can
Speaker 1: go through it. But sometimes that clear layer can start
Speaker 1: to rot away and it can leave the reflective layer
Speaker 1: that's underneath it exposed. And with some CDs, that reflective
Speaker 1: layer is made up of silver or sometimes a silver compound,
Speaker 1: and silver when exposed to air will tarnish. The tarnished
Speaker 1: silver won't reflect a laser properly, and so you start
Speaker 1: to get errors when you're trying to read information off
Speaker 1: of that kind of CD. Now, not all CDs were
Speaker 1: made that way, right, so only some CDs have this
Speaker 1: particular bronzing issue. In fact, our research group determined that
Speaker 1: the CDs that really have this specific problem we're all
Speaker 1: pressed in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, between the years nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight and nineteen nine. That's pretty darn specific. Now. The
Speaker 1: issue here, though, is that there's really no way to
Speaker 1: give an average lifespan for a compact disc because there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as an average compact discs there were
Speaker 1: there were so many different manufacturing and pressing processes and
Speaker 1: recording processes that different ones could last a different you know,
Speaker 1: theoretical maximum amount of time. So we can't really answer
Speaker 1: the question how long on average will as CD last.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of people suggest five to ten years,
Speaker 1: some people saying ten to twenty, some people going as
Speaker 1: far as fifty. I think it really depends on the
Speaker 1: way the CD was made and what storage facility it's in, Like,
Speaker 1: is it in a house where it's kept out of
Speaker 1: sunlight because UV radiation can affect CDs. Is it kept
Speaker 1: cool and dry, then it's gonna last longer. Is it
Speaker 1: not handled a lot? Like if it's it's your favorite
Speaker 1: music CD, and you handle it a lot, then it's
Speaker 1: going to degrade faster. Again, not instantaneously, and it may
Speaker 1: not even be noticeable at first, but eventually you might
Speaker 1: get the things where it starts to skip on a
Speaker 1: certain track, or it won't even play certain tracks. That
Speaker 1: will happen over time. And it's a similar story for
Speaker 1: other optical formats, which include you know, DVDs and Blu
Speaker 1: ray discs. These two have a limited lifespan, though that
Speaker 1: lifespan may stretch to as long as a century under
Speaker 1: ideal conditions. And a century is a long time for
Speaker 1: a single person, right, I mean, that's that's a significant
Speaker 1: amount of time. However, if we step outside of a
Speaker 1: human's lifespan and we look at it from the perspective
Speaker 1: of a historical account, then one hundred years is not
Speaker 1: long at all. I mean, imagine for a moment, if
Speaker 1: you had no access to any information that was recorded
Speaker 1: before nineteen twenty ten, because all the media that we
Speaker 1: had used to record info on had fallen apart or
Speaker 1: was otherwise unusable or inaccessible. That nothing before nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: two would be knowable apart from what people wrote about
Speaker 1: those times post nineteen twenty two. That would be crazy, right,
Speaker 1: But that's the kind of situation we're in when we
Speaker 1: start looking at digital information. All right, Well, what about
Speaker 1: we look at like hard drives, hard disk drives and
Speaker 1: solid state drives, you know, the stuff that's in your
Speaker 1: computer systems, your smartphones, that kind of thing. What do
Speaker 1: they have? You know, how long will information last in those? Well,
Speaker 1: they stored information in different ways. Hard disk drives have
Speaker 1: one or more platters in them, and each platter has
Speaker 1: a magnetic coding on it upon which information can be stored. So,
Speaker 1: just like cassettes and floppy disks and other magnetic storage methods,
Speaker 1: hard disk drives can be affected by powerful magnetic fields
Speaker 1: because they too, store information magnetically. Hardness drives have moving parts,
Speaker 1: so the platters spin quite quickly in fact, and an
Speaker 1: actuator mechanical arm with a read write quote unquote head
Speaker 1: on it. This is the bit that either can read
Speaker 1: the magnetic particles that are stored on a platter, or
Speaker 1: it can actually exert a magnetic field that aligns the particles.
Speaker 1: When you're writing information on the platter, it moves across
Speaker 1: the platter and it starts to retrieve or write information
Speaker 1: to the disc itself. And because we're talking about moving
Speaker 1: parts here, stuff can and does wear down over time
Speaker 1: and use. If it gets a lot of use, it
Speaker 1: wears out more quickly. Also, it means that you should
Speaker 1: be gentle when you're moving anything that happens to have
Speaker 1: a hard disk drive inside of it, because a good
Speaker 1: whack can damage the delicate parts. If you knock that
Speaker 1: actuator arm out of alignment, that's a big problem. It's
Speaker 1: going to be impossible to read or write stuff reliably
Speaker 1: to that hard disk drive. Now, hard drives don't tend
Speaker 1: to last very long because of those mechanical parts. I've
Speaker 1: seen estimates of the life span for hard disk drives
Speaker 1: lasting somewhere between three to maybe six and a half years,
Speaker 1: seven years. Some give it a little bit longer, some
Speaker 1: a little bit shorter. Of course, a hard disk drive
Speaker 1: can last longer than a decade. But that's you know,
Speaker 1: if we're looking at typical use and we're looking at
Speaker 1: the average life span of hard disk drives, we tend
Speaker 1: to fall in that three to seven year range, So
Speaker 1: your mileage may vary. It may depend upon how you
Speaker 1: use your hard disk drive and the setting that you're in.
Speaker 1: So they will eventually break down. Also, even if they
Speaker 1: don't break down sooner or later, really later, that magnetic
Speaker 1: information will start to move out of alignment just naturally.
Speaker 1: And so even if you were to preserve a hard
Speaker 1: disk drive perfectly and come back to it in a century,
Speaker 1: chances are a lot of the information would no longer
Speaker 1: be accessible because the actual magnetic particles would no longer
Speaker 1: be in the proper alignment. Solid state drives store information
Speaker 1: in a totally different way from hard disk drives, So
Speaker 1: instead of aligning magnetic particles, and SSD stores information through
Speaker 1: flash memory similar to USB sticks and other types of
Speaker 1: flash drives. These drives store information using nand flash that's
Speaker 1: in a n D and that in turn is composed
Speaker 1: of what are called floating gate transistors. And all of
Speaker 1: this gets super technical, but let's just kind of imagine
Speaker 1: it this way. Each floating gate can be either charged,
Speaker 1: which means it's a zero, or it could be non charged,
Speaker 1: which means it's a one. So it gets a little
Speaker 1: bit confusing because we often think of binary with zero
Speaker 1: being off and one being on. But in this case,
Speaker 1: zero means that there is a charge in a cell
Speaker 1: and one means there is no charge in that cell,
Speaker 1: And a drive is made up of a grid of
Speaker 1: these cells. So USB flash drives and SSDs are non
Speaker 1: volatile memory. That means that they retain information even if
Speaker 1: they are not receiving power. Right, So, if you were
Speaker 1: to turn off your computer and it has an SSD
Speaker 1: drive in it, you didn't just wipe out everything that
Speaker 1: was stored on that SSD. It remains there. However, if
Speaker 1: an SSD goes without power for an extended period, so
Speaker 1: we're talking like five to ten years here, it can
Speaker 1: experience what is called bit rot That is, some of
Speaker 1: those charged gates might lose their charge without access to power,
Speaker 1: and over time the information degrades. So SSDs are not
Speaker 1: immune to deterioration either. Given enough time, the information on
Speaker 1: those will be corrupted as well, without any other external
Speaker 1: forces being applied to the SSDs. Well, what about cloud storage,
Speaker 1: because that's changed everything, right, I mean, there's so much
Speaker 1: of the information that we use day to day that
Speaker 1: isn't even stored on our native device at all, or
Speaker 1: what is stored on our native device is a temporary
Speaker 1: representation of that file. The actual file lives in the cloud. Well,
Speaker 1: assuming that the company that's providing the storage remains strong,
Speaker 1: data stored in the cloud tends to be pretty darn resilient.
Speaker 1: And that's because in order to provide a reputable cloud
Speaker 1: storage service, or really any cloud service, companies have to
Speaker 1: ensure redundancy. Now, that just means that any information that's
Speaker 1: stored to the cloud system has to be stored on
Speaker 1: multiple machines, because remember, cloud just means someone else's computer.
Speaker 1: That's really what the cloud is. When you're storing stuff
Speaker 1: in the cloud, it's not just floating around in the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's being stored on servers that are part of some
Speaker 1: massive data server farm that are owned by some even
Speaker 1: more massive company like Amazon or Microsoft or Google. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason why these companies store the information on multiple
Speaker 1: machines is that should a single machine holding information malfunctions
Speaker 1: or I don't know, goes on fire or something, there
Speaker 1: are backups on other machines. So the customer ideally never
Speaker 1: even notices that there's any problem. There's no interruption of service,
Speaker 1: there's no delay. Their information is still on quote unquote
Speaker 1: the cloud, when really it's on multiple machines. So this
Speaker 1: is important because most of these data server farm places,
Speaker 1: they're using really cheap components, like lots of them, but
Speaker 1: they're inexpensive and it's you know, it's just off the
Speaker 1: shelf inexpensive components to store all this information or to
Speaker 1: run processes. That's what allows them to have this kind
Speaker 1: of redundancy because they're not spending ridiculous amounts of money
Speaker 1: to get state of the art machines in there. They
Speaker 1: don't need that. They just need machines that are you know,
Speaker 1: more or less reliable and more importantly inexpensive, so that
Speaker 1: you can have lots of them so that you have backup.
Speaker 1: So in the background, these companies can replace broken or
Speaker 1: damage systems with newer ones. They can migrate copies of
Speaker 1: information onto new machines or existing machines, keep things going
Speaker 1: smoothly and the customers never notice an issue. Now, there
Speaker 1: is a caveat there, which I will get to after
Speaker 1: we come back from this break. So before the break,
Speaker 1: I alluded to a caveat about having these indefinitely resilient
Speaker 1: data storage systems using the cloud, and that is I
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, assuming the company providing the storage
Speaker 1: remains strong. So we have to remember that much of
Speaker 1: cloud storage out there is resting in these few big companies,
Speaker 1: and they are really big and thus pretty resilient to
Speaker 1: change and to going out of business, but they're not
Speaker 1: immune to it. Even companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google
Speaker 1: have their vulnerabilities, and in fact, we're seeing increased pressure
Speaker 1: from around the world to break some of these companies
Speaker 1: up because they are so dominant in their respective spaces.
Speaker 1: So the odds of these companies going out of business
Speaker 1: are really really low, but they're not zero, or at
Speaker 1: least it's not zero that they won't be split up,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately that could lead to discontinuation of services
Speaker 1: in some areas. So we have to remember that the
Speaker 1: access to this information remains dependent upon these various companies
Speaker 1: staying in business and being capable of providing that service,
Speaker 1: So it's never a guarantee. So even the stuff that's
Speaker 1: saved in the cloud isn't necessarily permanent, it's probably it's
Speaker 1: probably in better shape than say something that's saved on
Speaker 1: a magnet or magnetized tape that you keep in your
Speaker 1: neodyne magnet room. It's going to be better than that,
Speaker 1: but it's not bulletproof. There are several other methods for
Speaker 1: storing information as well, including some that are fairly new.
Speaker 1: But the point remains our ability to hold on to
Speaker 1: knowledge depends upon the media we use and the machinery
Speaker 1: we use to access that media, and if we do
Speaker 1: not consistently move information to new storage methods, we run
Speaker 1: the risk of losing the older information. And I'll come
Speaker 1: back to that at the very end, but let's switch
Speaker 1: gears for a second, because sometimes we want to get
Speaker 1: rid of information. Sometimes we need to wipe some storage,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we need to make room for something new.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's had a gaming PC, you've probably at some
Speaker 1: point said, all right, well, I got to uninstall a
Speaker 1: couple of these titles so that I can install the
Speaker 1: newest game I want to play. Or maybe we want
Speaker 1: to just get rid of something we no longer need
Speaker 1: or use, or maybe we need to get rid of
Speaker 1: something because we don't want someone else to see it.
Speaker 1: For example, let's say that you've upgraded to a brand
Speaker 1: new computer and you want to sell your old computer,
Speaker 1: or you're going to donate it to like a school
Speaker 1: or something, or maybe you just want to recycle it. Well,
Speaker 1: chances are before you do that, you're going to want
Speaker 1: to wipe that computer clear of information first. If there's
Speaker 1: anything personal on computer, you probably don't want it falling
Speaker 1: into someone else's hands. Like, let's say you get some
Speaker 1: financial or medical information that was stored somewhere on that machine,
Speaker 1: you definitely want to get that wiped off before you
Speaker 1: hand it over to someone else. Well, what happens when
Speaker 1: you delete data, Well, if you're using a computer and
Speaker 1: you're moving files to the recycle bin, that doesn't actually
Speaker 1: mean that the files are gone. Even emptying the recycle
Speaker 1: bin doesn't necessarily mean the files are gone. What it
Speaker 1: means is that the computer has essentially designated the respective
Speaker 1: parts on the storage system holding those files as being
Speaker 1: available for new information. So like the markers that would
Speaker 1: designate that as being a file or gone, but the
Speaker 1: file itself, the information of the file itself is still there.
Speaker 1: But then when it's time for you to save new
Speaker 1: information to your computer, some of that new information might
Speaker 1: be overwritten on top of the older files that you
Speaker 1: quote unquote, So over time, you will slowly eradicate the
Speaker 1: information of that deleted file as your computer writes new
Speaker 1: information to those segments. But it's not instantaneous. And the
Speaker 1: important thing to remember is that deleting a file doesn't
Speaker 1: mean the file is gone. It's not enough to just
Speaker 1: delete a file. Many operating systems include options to let
Speaker 1: you permanently delete files, and this option typically just involves
Speaker 1: overwriting the selected deleted files with information, usually garbage data
Speaker 1: that doesn't actually mean anything. The original file is gone
Speaker 1: and it's replaced with gibberish. But let's say you have
Speaker 1: to be absolutely certain that no one will ever retrieve
Speaker 1: information from your hard drive. Maybe this computer held crucial
Speaker 1: financial information for an important company, or maybe it held
Speaker 1: medical information for lots of people, and say like a hospital,
Speaker 1: and it's time for you to downgrade the system and
Speaker 1: get rid of it. Well, you're gonna really want to
Speaker 1: make sure that that machine is wiped clear. So then
Speaker 1: you might want to engage in what I would like
Speaker 1: to think of as the nuclear option. It's called the
Speaker 1: Gutman method. So Peter Gutman and Colin Plum came up
Speaker 1: with this process in the nineties. It involves overwriting a
Speaker 1: disk drive with gibberish thirty five times, using different patterns,
Speaker 1: including some that are not patterns but random passes. So
Speaker 1: there's no pattern at all. It's just a random overright
Speaker 1: pass followed by a whole bunch of patterned overwrites followed
Speaker 1: by more random passes. And this is because even with
Speaker 1: your standard gibberish overwright, it can still be possible for
Speaker 1: a determined person with the right tools to retrieve at
Speaker 1: least some information off of a hard drive. This is
Speaker 1: because of that magnetic storage. We're talking about the hard
Speaker 1: disk drive era here, so we're really talking about looking
Speaker 1: for faint traces of magnetic imprints that could suggest what
Speaker 1: the original data saved on that hard disk drive was.
Speaker 1: Even by overwriting, those faint traces might remain. So this
Speaker 1: was Gutman's way of just obliterating any trace of what
Speaker 1: was there originally. So you really got to go to extremes,
Speaker 1: or at least you used to, because Gutman and Plum
Speaker 1: were really concerned about that magnetic issue. These days, most
Speaker 1: experts suggest that the Gutman method is really overkill, especially
Speaker 1: if you're using a solid state drive and that after
Speaker 1: three passes, you're usually in pretty reliable shape and you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about someone getting access to your information.
Speaker 1: There are also several software packages on the market that
Speaker 1: can go through the process of deleting files permanently, usually
Speaker 1: using some form of multipass overwrite patterns. Multipass meaning going
Speaker 1: over the entire storage drive, not like Leelu Dallas multipass.
Speaker 1: Sometimes folks go to even further extremes, such as using
Speaker 1: powerful magnets to destroy you know, magnetic storage that happens
Speaker 1: where you know you're that'll be part of the process.
Speaker 1: Some will even use shredders to destroy like hard disk
Speaker 1: platters and such, so that not only have the files
Speaker 1: been thoroughly deleted and overwritten, but the physical media itself
Speaker 1: has been physically destroyed. That's probably overkill for most of us,
Speaker 1: unless you go by a three number designation like double
Speaker 1: oh nine or something. But it really is interesting to
Speaker 1: me that information can simultaneously be challenging to preserve and
Speaker 1: difficult to get rid of. But we're also talking about
Speaker 1: different time skills here, right, It's not apples to apples
Speaker 1: for preservation. We're really concerned about the long haul, how
Speaker 1: can we keep information accessible even as the way we generate, store,
Speaker 1: and retrieve information changes. How can we ensure that future
Speaker 1: generations will have access to the information that's at our
Speaker 1: disposal today. There are so many offshoots of this as well.
Speaker 1: For example, the desire to preserve old information is what
Speaker 1: drove the creators of the multi Arcade Machine Emulator software
Speaker 1: or MAIM to do what they do. They wanted to
Speaker 1: create a way to preserve code that otherwise could fade
Speaker 1: into obscurity because these old arcade machines were physically coded
Speaker 1: onto chips that were part of these arcade cabinets, and
Speaker 1: over time more of those cabinets ended up being destroyed
Speaker 1: or they become inoperable, and so this was an attempt
Speaker 1: to create a system that would preserve that code, to
Speaker 1: make it playable, not necessarily for people to play, but
Speaker 1: again to preserve the code itself, otherwise it would be lost.
Speaker 1: And as for destroying information, well that tends to be
Speaker 1: for short term requirements, right, if there's nothing that's threatening
Speaker 1: us or our information, well we could just play the
Speaker 1: waiting game, depending on how we've stored the information in
Speaker 1: the first place, because sooner or later the medium that
Speaker 1: the information is on will deteriorate or it'll go obsolete,
Speaker 1: and no one will be able to get the information anyway,
Speaker 1: including you. So if you don't, if you're not in
Speaker 1: a rush, you could just wait and the information will
Speaker 1: eventually no longer be accessible. Now related to these concepts,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the challenge of figuring out how
Speaker 1: to future proof messaging so that people far into the
Speaker 1: future will understand what those messages mean. Let's think back
Speaker 1: to the Egyptian example. Without the Rosetta stone, we would
Speaker 1: have no way of knowing what the hieroglyphs mean. Not
Speaker 1: for sure. We could have a lot of hypotheses, but
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be able to really test them and prove
Speaker 1: that our hypothesis is accurate. So let's take an example.
Speaker 1: Let's take the problem of nuclear waste from nuclear power facilities.
Speaker 1: So some nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years
Speaker 1: and we have to store it. We have to put
Speaker 1: it someplace where it's out of the way and safe.
Speaker 1: And it also means that any warnings that we put
Speaker 1: up at nuclear waste storage facilities really needs to be
Speaker 1: easy for future generations to interpret, even if they have
Speaker 1: lost all other records of what that site is, so
Speaker 1: the signage needs to convey displace is dangerous. But then,
Speaker 1: as that hieroglyphs example showed us, this is easier said
Speaker 1: than done. We might do something that to us seems
Speaker 1: completely obvious, but there's no way of knowing that people
Speaker 1: ten thousand years from now will still understand it. There
Speaker 1: are experts who work hard to create iconography and messaging
Speaker 1: that someone unfamiliar with our current alphabet and language and
Speaker 1: symbols might understand. So for a really awesome treatment of
Speaker 1: this topic, I highly recommend a classic episode of ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent Invisible, a phenomenal show. If you've never listened
Speaker 1: to it, you definitely need to is It is one
Speaker 1: of the best podcasts I've ever listened to. But this
Speaker 1: particular one comes from way back when it was like
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen when it published, and it is titled ten
Speaker 1: thousand Years. Really a great, great episode. You should check
Speaker 1: that out. It's an incredible treatment of the challenge of
Speaker 1: how do you convey information to people that there's no
Speaker 1: way for us to know anything about them, and keeping
Speaker 1: in mind, like we're talking ten thousand years, because nuclear
Speaker 1: waste can stay dangerous that long. You go back ten
Speaker 1: thousand years and you suddenly think, wow, yeah, creating a
Speaker 1: message that would be readable ten thousand years from now
Speaker 1: that is going to be super challenging to do so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Storing data, retrieving data, destroying data, all of these things
Speaker 1: have their own challenges and obstacles in front of them.
Speaker 1: It's important for us to think about because it's also
Speaker 1: important for us to take steps to preserve things when
Speaker 1: we can. There are other great examples we can use.
Speaker 1: One I would point out is that a lot of people,
Speaker 1: particularly in my generation, we used stuff like Facebook to
Speaker 1: become kind of the storage center for photographs, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I have hundreds of photos stored on Facebook. But then
Speaker 1: I decided to peace out a Facebook. So I needed
Speaker 1: to download my Facebook information because otherwise I was going
Speaker 1: to lose access to all those pictures that I had stored.
Speaker 1: And it was just a kind of thing I had
Speaker 1: taken for granted that I would always be on Facebook
Speaker 1: and I would always have access to those images, and
Speaker 1: now I don't. And so it's again an example of
Speaker 1: things that we have to keep in mind when we
Speaker 1: choose a storage method, is that we should also occasionally
Speaker 1: think of ways to migrate information to a new storage
Speaker 1: method to make certain that we don't lose what came before.
Speaker 1: All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode about the
Speaker 1: paradoxical nature of information in the digital age. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The best
Speaker 1: way to do that is on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is tech Stuff HSW and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.