
Ask HN: Do you think we’ll be able to play a VHS in 2119? - quickthrower2
How about a CD? DVD? Blue Ray? SATA HDD? USB anything? Turn on a 2000s or 2010s smartphone and get data from it? SSD cards?
======
dhkxh
This reminds me of Hello Internet recently releasing a special 2-minute
episode of their podcast on a wax cylinder -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder)

Really difficult to get your hands on one but it's possible. And the peak of
their popularity was about 100 years ago.

------
greenyoda
I'm guessing that none of these formats will be readable in 100 years. 9-track
magnetic tape (remember those big tape drives on mainframes, starting in 1964?
[1]) is already virtually impossible to read, and that's after it was out of
use for only a couple of decades. And that was an industry standard medium
with lots of important stuff on it, like data from NASA missions, old business
software and backups, etc. Somehow it all got converted to other media. So I
don't think any of today's media standards will survive anywhere close to 100
years, especially not consumer-grade stuff like CDs, DVDs, VHS and USBs.
(Think of how hard it became to read a floppy disk just a few years after PC
manufacturers stopped shipping machines that had floppy drives.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape)

------
LarryMade2
I don't think circuits degrade that much over 100 years, now the electronic
components (like capacitors) may need to be replaced, some plastic parts may
also, but the devices could still be made operational. I guess besides
component failure is the amount of firmware data loss over time (devices with
EPROMs instead of ROMs) would be another factor, which might not be good for
the more complex devices, then again such code might be backed up somewhere in
a vintage device collector's archive.

------
zzo38computer
I think so (if the data is still intact), although it will probably be very
difficult to do with common equipment; you will need uncommon equipment to do
so (which might be very rare by that time, and maybe not available
commercially, but I think some interested people might make their own if
needed, and do it anyways). (Even now there is people interested in various
kind of historical stuff.)

------
dyeje
"We" as in a normal person? Probably not. You'll have to go through a museum
or a collector who has a functioning one most likely.

