rock n roll is the. praise for his contribution to. generations pay their respects to the legends. you're watching a reminder you can always get the latest on our web site at. any time of. the full. shift special how can we preserve our data for future generations. from photographs to scientific research to open so we store much of what we produce digitally however most digital storage mediums will degrade over time and software for retrieving data is constantly evolving. show the data we store will be available to future generations. in the past people recorded important information on stone parchment and preserve their collective knowledge for hundreds of thousands

of years. today we're living in a digital age we can store more and more data on smaller and smaller storage units but these are not built to last and we're facing the risk digital memory loss. when it comes to computers things quickly become outdated. collectors like félix cons make a point of holding on to obsolete technology thanks to people like him we can still access information saved on older data carriers. so. for one thing you need the storage medium to be intact. then you need the appropriate software to retrieve the data and lastly you need an operating system that is compatible with that software switzerland's computer museum showcases obsolete heart and software the team has often succeeded in restoring data from old storage

media. there's usually a workaround for accessing the data but it can be tricky sometimes we need to build an interface converter so we can link the old system to a u.s.b. port we usually get it to work the key criterion is that the old hardware is in good condition. later bush is the museum's go to guy for retrieving data from old storage media as his current mission to access data stored on this from the disk it's thought to contain information about a special stamp issued by the swiss postal service in 1996. does he offer i hope the drive still works and i need the floppy disk to be intact . but i'm optimistic that. i don't know is a computer scientist and has been with the museum for almost a decade he's an expert on silly data carriers.

i hope we can speed this up otherwise we'll have to restart the system now we should be able to reject it. the museum has a vast collection of computer hardened software from different periods in time which means writer can usually find whatever obscure device he needs to retrieve data from old storage media nothing is happening no wait now it is. analog is still the best film roles for example will still have the photos on them unless they have been improperly stored that video uses magnetic tape which the great slowly and the electronic storage media will use now won't even last 50 years . older data carriers can store less but they're often more durable magnetic storage media like floppy disks last only 20 to 30 years optical storage

media like cd roms are highly susceptible to scratching and temperature fluctuations and although hard drives send us peace digs can store large amounts of data they often d. great within just a few short years studies show that our global data storage needs will grow to 175 trillion gigabytes by 2025 to process and store data we need new innovative archiving solutions research is a direct and they're hard looking is a one day to carry other been around for millions of years d.n.a. . d.n.a. has 2 advantages it has extremely long so it will last for up to 1000 years i think and it has an extremely high storage density so we can save vast amounts of data tiny specks. of. classes a chemistry professor at. together with his colleagues he's developed

a method that lets them record digital information like an m p 3 file on to strands or to synthesize d.n.a. this is how it works d.n.a. molecules consist of 4 chemical bases a fight any. scene finding and g. guanine binary computer code is assigned to these bases respectively then an artificial d.n.a. strand is generated from which this code is safely stored to be retrieved at a later time. so far this method remains very complicated and expensive but i.t. companies like microsoft have started investing in this field and tech start ups are also looking into d.n.a. and storage media for good reason. you know used to computers having ever greater storage capacity isn't processing spaceflights light it does the physicality at the same time we know that the physical properties on which our computer technology is

based have limits or physicality whatever shout industry i also hope that's why the tech industry is looking to the world of biology and chemistry to see which other data storage techniques exist. and there you have d.n.a. . dauphine. is available. one reason why d.n.a. makes for a good long term data carrier is that humanity will likely always have an interest in analyzing its own genetic material so it is probable that we will retain the technology to retrieve data from d.n.a. quo in years to come d.n.a. segments and capsulated in glasgow supposed to keep for up to a 1000 years there so tiny that they're only visible on the an electron microscope each segment can store about 10 killer bytes of data the equivalent of 2 pages of text. since i think you can see we've got 20 to 30 pages of text.

but we're looking at this in. 200000 times magnification. so this really is tiny. if we zoom out we're looking at an entire book of the view that. on the out further and we've got the equivalent of an entire shelf of books for the people to call for more. and you see millions of these class elements so if we had one around the size of a dust particle would have an entire library thinking about. this promising data storage method however is still in the early stages of development. how can we preserve data for a very long time and also protected from outside influences and attacks it in the norwegians has created a special day to conquer the arctic world on kind on spitsbergen island if they plan to store vital data saved on the phone. we're in the town of drum and

no one's capital or it's here that arena be extra i.t. companies banks the team is working on how to preserve data for new eternity but in a sense u.s.b. thumb drives for example are not built to last i could be as i would use our welcome to the people today this fits into my computer but we'll do that tomorrow most likely not because even now you find computers without this u.s.b. interface yet because this is the old one i was used to see so you might see in a 100 years u.s.b. it openly knows that it is so as now it can fit in the computer when it's in the computer i can take those they don't and i convert them to our super high resolution sure calls and write them all the but. the idea is to preserve the data for many years to come the company technician retrieves it from the u.s.b. stick and then saves it into q bomb or quick response codes.

they're essentially what happens when you turn binary computer code into 2 dimensional black and white. they skew our code is then exposed on an analog black and white film which can eventually be developed. this may not seem like a method from the past but arena being strong and his team believe this is how it will be storing data in future. they say on the ideal conditions film keeps for over 500 years. and that it superior to alec tronic media. but in times of everything gets digital why such an old school technology so the film medium has been carrying all the additional information from the past into the future the last 140 s. so what we did we converted to the film the photosensitive phone from an analog information carrier to additional information carrier and we did it because of the

unique longevity properties and the robustness of the media basically this storage medium is the only self-contained storage medium around that means it contains all the information that you as the client and the owner of these data needs at an arbitrary point in the shooter to be able to retrieve it and to see again your information against as you see you can see the data stored on film with your bat at the beginning of the roll there are even instructions for how to access the information even if you what you basically see here is the instruction how to retrieve the data this is human readable information and if this explains in detail about the storage medium how the storage medium is constructed how it's supposed to be stored and kept and then how you can get the data back the data retrieval technology and with this explanation i'm going to understand that in 500 years yes as long as you are able to read english if you don't understand the language which is there you can use a dictionary to get it into your life together. but how could such films be stored

for 500 years to find out we traveled further knowles to schmidt found here going to be a strong team has joined forces with a norwegian construction company together they run a digital data bunker so to speak the norwegian archipelago is a demilitarized zone they're full considered particularly spangle just over 2500 people call us arctic occupied ago that there are many de funked coal mines around the main town of longyearbyen and in 2017 the arctic well down kind was opened in one of them since then representatives from many different countries institutions and companies have traveled here to secure the store their data in this sub terrain in bunker we're brought here believed to be been the 1st bit of a very quiet by several i've always been there they are very open. so this is for us support for the concept that it is there that can be kept here

about but. many many here it's already a firearm. of course so the long term credit preservation is reform of the within that the that you can see it in today france facts in 2 different data centers about there we believe the law in the importance also augured that was it didn't get this seeds of culture here. plan is to create a kind of bank campus humanities collective knowledge some 150 meters from loved her sons escaped the dental here protected by the permafrost will hopefully be safe considering the world's grim data storage nice will soon need further long term solutions.

to our air. in northern greece. coal mining is splitting the population in. fear for their jobs in the mines and power stations. mothers are fighting the old dominant energy corporation yup they blame us for destroying the environment. in a. person or a blessing extra king coaling greece will go up with it. next on d w. their blood and living in germany she is reminded of what that means on a daily basis presenter on a hike it is if you see all you stereotypes about africa it hurts you she traveled across germany to meet other black people and to hear their stories. the more you do something for your country but you're still the black young. afro germany. in 45 minutes on d w. w's crime fighters are back with the africa's most successful radio

drama series continues from the all of us odes are available online in the course you can share and discuss on w africa's facebook page and other social media platforms such crime fighters tune in now. from. the car mining region in northern crete. many people here used to think of brown coal as a divine gift. the minds created jobs and coal fired power plants brought over tricity to all the grease but today the coal mines.