Comment by 9dev
4 hours ago
At some point, we'll probably have a new field in history for digital archeology, and I'm really envious for those future historians! They'll be getting to sleuth around old datasets, trying to reconstruct the history of computing, understand long-forgotten file formats to preserve data, use statistical methods to analyse binary backups, and trace for specific documentation versions to crack old encryption formats...
The term "programmer-archaeologist" was coined by the author Vernor Vinge in his 1999 "A Deepness in the Sky"[0] (a pretty great read and definitely recommended) and the field is arguably a real thing now[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_archaeology
This field already is alive and well in the gaming community. Games companies are notorious for not spending money on keeping their old code around, which is why it's been at the forefront of digital archaeology efforts a lot of the time to preserve the industry's history.
I'd also throw the wayback when machine and the internet archive into this bucket.