All our paper and ink degrade very fast compared to the ones used historically; laser-printed stuff is even worse; and digital media (with the possible exception of tape, which might be slightly better than paper) worse than both. All our modern data is stored on such media.
There are some projects that exist; such as the memory of mankind project, which uses human-readable laser-etched ceramic tablets stored in an abandoned salt mine for long term archival. They also have ceramic micro-film, but one of their requirements is that the most important data can be read without any need for a computer, etc. hence the aforementioned larger tablets.
I was thinking about long-term historical traces (for which higher density tends to mean less lifetime), based on the dick drawings comment above; you’re right for other considerations though.
I think it’s actually worse now than in the past.
All our paper and ink degrade very fast compared to the ones used historically; laser-printed stuff is even worse; and digital media (with the possible exception of tape, which might be slightly better than paper) worse than both. All our modern data is stored on such media.
There are some projects that exist; such as the memory of mankind project, which uses human-readable laser-etched ceramic tablets stored in an abandoned salt mine for long term archival. They also have ceramic micro-film, but one of their requirements is that the most important data can be read without any need for a computer, etc. hence the aforementioned larger tablets.
It’s relatively small scale though.
Our information density is wildly higher though, you can’t look at only media lifetime.
I was thinking about long-term historical traces (for which higher density tends to mean less lifetime), based on the dick drawings comment above; you’re right for other considerations though.