Bitrot refers to the decay of electronic data with no apparent cause or digital art that imitates natural decay in virtual environments. The cause of bitrot is unknown, but theories include cosmic rays, alpha particles, and electrically charged data leakage. Some programmers are developing algorithms to produce controlled bitrot in virtual environments to make them more realistic. To protect against the first kind of bitrot, it is important to regularly back up data stored on memory sticks, hard drives, or floppies.
Bitrot is an interesting term that has two separate meanings. One of these involves the decay of electronic data with no apparent cause; the other to digital art that imitates life by reflecting natural decay in digital environments.
As for the first meaning, many of us have had the experience of saving a valuable program, game or file on a storage medium for safekeeping. The file remains there, undisturbed and inaccessible for months, maybe even years. Finally there comes a day when we go to the hard drive or take out the precious floppy or memory stick and you can’t access the data!
How can it be? In many cases there is no possibility of external corruption. In fact, the data may have been successfully accessed multiple times in the past. So what happened in that period of time where the data just sat in an archive? Some would explain it by saying bitrot happens!
While experts haven’t agreed on the mechanics, explanations for the bitrot abound. For a while there was a rumor that cosmic rays caused the bitrot, although this theory has since been presented as an urban legend. Others argue that alpha particles, naturally generated within microchips, could cause bitrot. Some “memory stick theories” state that electrically charged data simply “leaks” from the chips after a period of years.
While one field is intent on detecting and preventing bitrot, another is interested in developing algorithms to produce it, at least in a controlled way. As virtual worlds gain popularity, programmers strive to make virtual environments as realistic as possible. One of the visual “defects” of a virtual environment is that it is perfect and remains perfect. A virtual building does not age over time. A virtual vase of flowers looks as fresh today as the day it was rendered.
While this may seem convenient, it isn’t realistic in a world created to mimic life. The immutable state of virtual objects makes virtual worlds appear stilted and stilted.
Bitrot, as expressed in the built-in algorithms, would allow rendered virtual objects to decay in specific, targeted ways. Older buildings would look different from newer buildings; flowers could sprout and blossom and wither; and the overall environment would come to life with the ebb and flow of time. Bitrot, if successful, would represent a huge step forward in the creation of virtual realism.
While we may have to wait for bitrot to hit virtual worlds, we can protect ourselves from the first kind in the real world right now. If you use a memory stick to store important data, it might be a good idea to occasionally mirror it to other storage media, make sure the data is accessible, then copy it back to the stick. Reset the clock, so to speak. For data stored on hard drives or floppies, follow the same basic rules and back up everything important. Bottom line, don’t let the data sit around so long that the mysteries of bitrot emerge.
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