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The Future of these Proceedings

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We have some concerns about the archival value of this volume. Paper is a durable medium, in its acid-free state. How durable is software? These Proceedings are composed of HTML code bound together with CGI bin scripts connected to current versions of mathematical software (like Maple or Mathematica), together with a collection of images, data and text in various formats from GIF to Postscript to ASCII to raw binary. Where will this volume be in ten years? How about ten months? The standards are changing very rapidly. Experience to date tells us that the potential for long-term functionality is quite limited. Constant improvements cause old versions of any software, whether programming language or text formatting, to be discarded and forgotten. The storage medium is also volatile as the supporting hardware technology shifts out from under it.
Perhaps a more pertinent question is, supposing that someone will be able to read these Proceedings at some time in the future, will they want to? Although this experiment is at the limit of today's technologies, in some not so distant tomorrow it may be as ``low fidelity" as old 58 rpm wax phonograph records compared to CDs. Certainly the relevance of the content will endure but the delivery mechanism may impact on its effectiveness.

In a somewhat retrograde act, the Canadian Mathematical Society has published the Proceedings in the traditional hardcopy form. This seems appropriate insofar as the hardcopy may act as a telltale in the distant future, much as the skeletal remains of an organism which has long since turned to dust. It will carry a description of the means and function of an experiment at a critical turn in the history of mathematical communications.

While this point of view offers a somewhat dim future for the Proceedings , it doesn't detract from the underlying value of both the content and the experience. Like many things at the bleeding edge of development, its basic importance is in illuminating the path to the immediate future.



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