Letters: September 2025

Safer on paper

I read with interest the recent articles by Derek Lowe and Andrea Sella.

Lowe writes on the obsoletion of technologies and makes suggestions as to what might last until 2060. Yet, as we advance towards a more online, digital world, Sella questions if our accumulated knowledge is as secure as that of the ancients. Take an example such as the BBC Domesday Project published in 1986 to recognise the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book – a multimedia resource that is all but gone now and a prime example of digital obsolescence. Many PhD students will be sorely lamenting the loss of the British Library Ethos database as a result of a cyber attack in October 2023, which is still not fully reinstated nearly two years later.