Ultimately I believe this project is outside the scope of private enterprise, necessitating governmental oversight. States must offer the resources and/or create policy which mandates the universal access of archives. Whether this comes in the form of state funding on grant or a public project, I see little impetus to create a universal database of archives in the private sector.

I am an advocate for the establishment of national or global, redundant archives databases. As Conway (2000) demonstrated, digital media is volatile and impermanent. The risk of important digital archives vanishing due to benign neglect is immediate and endemic. One need look no further than the NASA digital archives – a vast number of digital records are useless now because they were not copied to redundant sites. Accordingly the magnetic tapes degraded and are paperweights now.

Concerning those who are not “jacked” in I offer little comfort – once a paradigm shifts those who do not follow it are often lost in translation. Adapt or perish, for there is no turning back. The digital divide will be a faint memory within a generation, at least in the Western world.