“While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible.”

— Lawrence Lessig

May the Source Be With You (2001)
Context: While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible. Once a company that produces a certain product goes out of business, it has no simple way to uncover how its product encoded data. The code is thus lost, and the software is inaccessible. Knowledge has been destroyed.

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Lawrence Lessig71

American academic, political activist. 1961

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