Digital decay and the archival cloud

Throughout human history, the documentation of events and thoughts usually required a good deal of time and effort. Somebody had to sit down with a stylus or a pen or, later, a typewriter or a tape recorder, and make a deliberate recording. That happened only rarely. Most events and thoughts vanished from memory, individual and collective, soon after they happened. If they were described or discussed at all, it was usually in conversation, face to face or over a phone line, and the words evap...