Vinton Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, notes that watching BBC's online video from 1997 is a challenge now. So what about in 100 or 1,000 years?
Going forward, we must also remain aware of limitations of the data we access through the internet. Information on the web varies in quality from completely useless or even damaging to stunningly valuable.
Today's search engines draw the most relevant information to our attention, and as more data become available online, the importance of search engines will only increase. In the future, people around the world will likely look for new ways to identify the authenticity of online information sources.
We will also be confronted with a kind of "information decay" in which digital objects become less and less accessible owing to the age of the software that created it.
As an example: it is already a challenge to watch videos posted on the BBC website in 1997.
Imagine trying to watch the same video in 100 years. Or in one thousand years.
It's not only file formats that change, though. Changes in computer programs, operating systems and even the hardware that we use to build computers will accentuate the challenge of keeping digital information meaningful.