Black Riders

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The XKCD Digital Lifespan Chart in Context, v1.2

Winston Pei

After a friend sent me a link to a news article about the breakdown of the “safety film” used for microfilm and microfiche circa 1950–1990, I figured I had to do a three-asterisk and seven-word update of my original XKCD Digital Lifespan Chart in Context.

This new version continues to be shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License, as is the original XKCD comic.

And as with the original, The XKCD Digital Lifespan Chart in Context, v1.2, is once again also available as a high resolution png and in pdf format.

See this content in the original post

Long Description of The XKCD Digital Resource Lifespan Chart in Context, v1.2

This figure consists of a horizontal bar-style chart showing a comparative timeline of different book technologies.

Under the title of The XKCD Digital Resource Lifespan Chart in Context, version 1.2, there is an alternating bar of black and grey rectangles representing a 6000-year scale of time in 500-year increments, labelled every 1000 years from 3000 BCE to 3000 CE.

Below the timescale are twelve bars representing different book technologies, with the bars 1 to 4 spanning most of the width of the figure, bars 5 to 9 spanning approximately half the width, and bars 10 to 12, which represent technologies that require additional equipment in order to read the book, spanning less than 1/100th of the width:

  1. Clay Tablets – a dark grey bar from approximately 3200 BCE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  2. Papyrus Scrolls – a dark grey bar from approximately 3000 BCE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  3. Khibu (or Quipu) – a light grey from approximately 3000 BCE to 900 CE, then a dark grey bar from 900 CE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  4. Pottery & Bronze – a dark grey bar from approximately 2500 BCE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  5. Tortoise Shell – a dark grey bar from approximately 1200 BCE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  6. Silk – a dark grey bar from approximately 600 BCE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  7. Bamboo Strips – a dark grey bar from approximately 400 BCE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  8. Birch Bark & Palm Leaf – a dark grey bar from approximately 200 BCE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  9. Paper & Parchment – a dark grey bar from approximately Year 0 to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future

  10. Microfilm & Microfiche* – a short dark grey bar from approximately 1800 CE to 2000 CE, with an arrow indicating a continuation into the future, followed by an asterisk that references a footnote at the bottom left of the image that reads “if on polyester film and not acetate”

  11. PDF – a tiny narrow grey bar spanning approximately 20 years, from 2000 to 2020, with three question marks after indicating an uncertain future

  12. The XKCD Digital Resource Lifespan Chart Roughly to Scale – a tiny light grey rectangle spanning approximately 40 years, from 1980 to 2020

In the bottom right hand quadrant of the chart, the original XKCD comic, titled My Access to Resources on [Subject] Over Time, is reproduced as a zoomed in detail of the grey rectangle in row 12 above. It shows a time scale in five-year increments from 1985 to 2020, with seven bars below it:

  1. Book on Subject – full width grey bar with arrows on both ends indicating extension beyond the timescale

  2. [Subject].pdf – a grey bar running from 2003 to the left edge, with an arrow on the right indicating extension beyond the timescale

  3. [Subject] Web Database – a grey bar running from approximately 1999, with part of the bar ending at 2011 with the label “Site goes down, backend data not on Archive.org” and the rest ending at 2017 with the label “Java frontend no longer runs”

  4. [Subject] Mobile App (Local University Project) – a grey bar running from 2010 to 2015, ending with the label “Broken on new OS, not updated” pointing to it with an arrow

  5. [Subject] Analysis Software – a grey bar running from 2000 to 2010, ending with an arrow pointing to it from the same label as above, “Broken on new OS, not updated”

  6. Interactive [Subject] CD-ROM – a grey bar running from approximately 1995 to 2007, ending with the label “CD scratched, new computer has no CD drive anyway.”

  7. Library Microfilm [Subject] Collection – full width grey bar with arrows on both ends indicating extension beyond the timescale

Below these seven bars, the caption of the original comic reads “It’s unsettling to realize how quickly digital resources can disappear without ongoing work to maintain them.”

In the bottom left quadrant of the image, the small print reads “Original comic courtesy https://xkcd.com/1909/ as shared under its CC BY-NC 2.5 license. Date range information courtesy of the Oxford Illustrated History of the Book, Oxford University Press, 2020, with a bit of wikipedia sprinkled in. Copyright © 2023 Winston Pei – www.blackriders.com – under a CC BY-NC 2.5 Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/