It all started with a question from a photo instructor at Cuesta College to me and my boss: "How do I keep my digital family photos around?".

The answer we ended up giving was along the lines of "you can't", "it's hard", or some combination of the two. This answer went against my intuition: How could that be? Digital data is pure, its "essence" isn't reduced, damaged, or reduced by copying. So why is it easier to keep a meatspace artifact around longer than a digital one? Or to put the question succinctly: Why is it so hard to keep data around for a long time? 

I started looking for an answer, There had to be a better answer than constantly tending over backups. There had to be some sort of way to store arbitrary binary data for very long periods of time with little or no human intervention. I'm convinced there is an answer out there, but so far I haven't been able to find one answer.

As I talked about my search for a long term data solution with other people, I found that I had hit something of a raw nerve with them. It seems like everybody that I've talked to has a story of traumatic data loss. While I admit that I knew better, and that the reason why I have traumatic data loss stories of my own is due to negligence on my part, I don't think that it is reasonable or fair to place this blame on a non-technical person. With all of the progress that we've made in computing, long term storage of data for "anybody" should be a trivial and Solved problem.

My obsession has a goal: Find a way to trivially store arbitrary binary data for 10,000 years.

More on that later.