Google exec Vint Cerf: 'Digital Dark Ages' could be result of saving data online

Maybe it's time to print out those important mementos and documents.

Google Vice President Vint Cerf worries that "we are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole, without realizing it," NPR reports.

Cerf, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual conference, said historians who try to study the 21st century may be unable to do so, because the era will become a "digital Dark Age."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"Some people make the argument that the important stuff will be copied and put into new media, and so why should we worry," Cerf says. "But…historians will tell you that sometimes documents and transactions images and so on may turn out to have an importance which is not understood for hundreds of years. Failure to preserve them will cause us to lose our perspective."