Internet Pioneer Warns Of Information Black Hole

(RTTNews) - Vinton Cerf, an American internet pioneer and a Vice President at Google Inc. (GOOG), expressed worries that digital history will be lost in future unless a "digital vellum" is developed to preserve software and hardware.

According to Vint Cerf, who is considered as one of the fathers of the internet, the 21st century would be like an "information black hole" for the future historians as the hardware and software required to read our digital files will soon become obsolete.

Cerf explained that people still have VHS tapes, but getting a device to play those tapes are becoming very difficult. Likewise, in future even if historians would get hold of our files, there is no guarantee that they would have the correct software or hardware to read it.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, Cerf recommended the need for a "digital vellum,"-- to preserve every digital information, software and hardware so that it could be used in the future.

Cerf recommended Olive, (Open Library of Images for Virtualized Execution), which is collaborative project under development at Carnegie Mellon University with IBM. Under project Olive, researchers capture a digital snapshots of any computer hardware as they run software and programs and preserve it.

"The solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the content and the application and the operating system together, with a description of the machine that it runs on, and preserve that for long periods of time. And that digital snapshot will recreate the past in the future," said Cerf according to BBC report.