One of the emerging job categories these days is digital archiving, professional approaches to recording permanently the seemingly infinite digital information we are creating. [Leaving century] I remember waist-high 40 MB hard drives that served a small corporation. [/] Now, I have heavily photoshopped pictures that are 30 MB. [Leaving century] And I remember when photoshop wasn't a verb. [/]

The linked NYT article isn't revealing a new idea. You can study this at any level, including a doctoral program in digital curation and archiving. Digital archiving is a serious issue for individuals and nations. Finding reliable long-term media is far from trivial, when long-term is 100+ years. To return to the photography example, DVDs once seemed like the dream media. Now, they are laughably small, and can't be relied upon for even a decade. Imagine the issues faced by a large corporation or a modern government. (On the other hand, one DVD will hold about 700,000 flash fiction stories.) Transience of information is also an issue. For example: "Before Barack Obama even finished taking the oath of office, the White House site switched over to the Obama administration’s version." Dang. I meant to copy that.

There are many who lose sleep over finding a way to preserve the entire culture. I don't find that necessary. But we do need to preserve this, the Decade of Flash Fiction.