With our world becoming ever more digitized, we need to think about the long term survival of our online information. Google CEO Vint Cerf has made our world aware of this new problem. As a digital world approaches, our history could be lost. Cerf spoke of a, “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century called bit rot, where old computer files become useless junk."
Cerf looked to  a “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so keep out-of-date files active no matter the date. Cerf went on to say, “When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history," the solution is simple and feasible. The old files are uploaded to a computer that mimics the software the file ran on. Basically a computer that can read otherwise defunct files.
       
     This technological problem is increasingly becoming more severe. Ultimately, we need to think what footprint we want to leave on humanity, and how we can ensure our progress is continued. Being a Teenager who was born into a technological world I for one can say with certainty that I use the Internet to store and access thousands of files. Ranging from my photos to my documents and emails the internet is a vital part of my every day life. I believe that Cerf's mission is going to be a long haul but is much needed in our ever advancing world. With technology slowly but assuredly being integrated into our lives, we need to make sure that it's for a good cause. We don't want to make unparalleled achievements then lose them to defunct files. An undocumented world is a world to be forgotten.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgotten-century-email-photos-vint-cerf