Just discovered Wotsit’s Format…a website devoted to information on many file formats. From the introduction:
Welcome to Wotsit’s Format, the complete programmer’s resource on the net. This site contains file format information on hundreds of different file types and all sorts of other useful programming information; algorithms, source code, specifications, etc.
Assuming they know more about file formats than grammar, this is just the sort of site we’ll need to keep track of for future file migration strategies in MARS and follow-on systems. It seems to me some library group should be focusing on this (e.g., set up a clearinghouse operation that gathered information on every known file format in existence). Perhaps some library entity is doing this and I just missed it. I do know the Long Now Foundation is beginning to work on a Wikipedia-like system for this information. A factoid I uncovered in this interesting thread that appeared on the Omidyar Network.
To get an idea of why this is already a problem, take a look at this article “The Fading Memory of the State” by David Talbot (from MIT’s Technology Review).