> All data degrades and eventually disappears unless an effort is made to care for and maintain it.
This is the crux of it. You can have your holographic quartz or whatever new technology is supposed to last a hundred million years, but unless someone is keeping it from being thrown away after your family has a yard sale after you die, it's gone. Getting people to care about your data is the hardest thing required to make data last forever.
And even if they do care you have to also preserve the system used to read it. Even if your papyrus survives if no one knows your language it doesn’t matter.
> All data degrades and eventually disappears unless an effort is made to care for and maintain it.
This is the crux of it. You can have your holographic quartz or whatever new technology is supposed to last a hundred million years, but unless someone is keeping it from being thrown away after your family has a yard sale after you die, it's gone. Getting people to care about your data is the hardest thing required to make data last forever.
And even if they do care you have to also preserve the system used to read it. Even if your papyrus survives if no one knows your language it doesn’t matter.