Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  A new way to stop digital decay (27 Sep 2005) It is called the Universal Virtual Computer (UVC) and is being developed by IBM, a computer giant. The researchers are writing programs to run on this virtual computer that decode different document formats. Future libraries will have to write software that emulates the virtual computer on each new generation of computer systems. But once that is done, they will be able to view all their stored documents using the decoders written for the virtual computer, which only have to be written once. “The decoder can be tested for correctness today, while the format is still readable,” says Raymond van Diessen of IBM. Article URL: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4368112 Read 80 more articles from Economist sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: A Really Customizable Keyboard          Books about Usability | Information Architecture | Information Visualisation | Technology History This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy