Whilst books printed 500 years ago and which have been sensibly preserved since, still exist unchanged in their original form, we are already having immense difficulties preserving film material dating from when Film was invented. Not to mention all the video tapes and floppy and hard discs that are barely thirty years old. Whereas the information recorded in books is generally uncoded and still decipherable today, more recent media depending on coded information are comparatively limited, as much of their hardware has since disappeared or become redundant.

The sudden data explosion instigated increasingly rapid developments that were, naturally enough, not supposed to be particularly durable. A shift of priority has only taken place recently, as the inherent problems and flaws of current systems have become apparent.