I’ve often wondered what the implications of the internet will be for future historians. On the one hand, there is now an enormous body of writings from not just the educated elite as in the past but from all sorts of ordinary people, which is something that has never really existed before.
On the other hand, how and for how long will these writings be retained? If we stop writing things on paper, will these digital writings become completely inaccessible at some point? Could we have a situation where there are almost no writings from a certain period down the road? That would be unfortunate.