New ideas for old information

We are barely a generation past the day when a stack of ledgers and cabinets of contracts and correspondence best represented the paper trail of a corporate history.

The business information record of today looks much different than it did 20 years ago, but is no less bulky. The fruit of the Information Age is also a creaking attic of accumulation full of diverse records created by more people and systems than ever. From microfiche to punch cards to tape drives to hard disks to solid state, we have counted on technology to outpace our need to retain everything, even as those resources inevitably become strained and call for new solutions...