Not only a dead format, but a unstable shelf life format. CDs and DVDs were always marketed as storage for good. But technically that was never possible, not the way it was actually manufactured. The used plastics and metal laminates had a rough expected life of 15 years or thereabouts, at best. Obviously a massive increase from magnetic tapes that started degrading as soon as the recording stopped and got slowly more damaged the more you played them. But still not a permanent solution. No organized data is stored forever, entropy won’t allow this. Most if not all original compact discs are probably gone by now, and some end user burnables had even worse chemistry in their data layers than original prints.
Only actively making new copies of digital goods in new storage media regularly keeps those goods alive. We need new storage mediums that are resilient in the measure of centuries and not just a decade or so. We need commercial glass 3D optical storage now.
Not only a dead format, but a unstable shelf life format. CDs and DVDs were always marketed as storage for good. But technically that was never possible, not the way it was actually manufactured. The used plastics and metal laminates had a rough expected life of 15 years or thereabouts, at best. Obviously a massive increase from magnetic tapes that started degrading as soon as the recording stopped and got slowly more damaged the more you played them. But still not a permanent solution. No organized data is stored forever, entropy won’t allow this. Most if not all original compact discs are probably gone by now, and some end user burnables had even worse chemistry in their data layers than original prints.
Only actively making new copies of digital goods in new storage media regularly keeps those goods alive. We need new storage mediums that are resilient in the measure of centuries and not just a decade or so. We need commercial glass 3D optical storage now.