The Dork Age

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The Dork Age is a colloquial term for a period between about N.D. 130 and 190 during which, due to rapid shifts in technology and a high degree of digitization, very little information survived. The loss of data was discovered around N.D. 200, and was considered very shocking and appalling.

Background

During the original era of the old Alliance, most digital archiving was done by the Gudersnipe Foundation, who had had a standardized and centralized database from the first. Data storage services were commonly sold; so thanks to the organization, much information survived.

However, when the Long Night arrived, most Alliance Member-Worlds were cut off from the Foundation, and by the dawn of the New Day, the notion of buying storage and archival services from the Foundation had been forgotten.

As the Alliance was rebuilt, rapid advances in technology were made all across the known worlds, kicking off an information age and computer revolution. Civilizations, especially around the Alliance capitol and on the Greater Continent quickly moved towards all-digital media. However, these rapid shifts in technology also caused rapid obsoletion.

By N.D. 200, it was determined that any data not transferred to a storage medium created within the last decade had effectively become unreadable. What few storage systems that had been created before that time, whose media did survive, were largely unreadable thanks to changes in formatting. All in all, this led to a sixty-year period, between about N.D. 130 (the last time analogue files on magnetic tapes were the norm), and N.D. 190 (when standardized formats and mediums with long shelf-lives became popular) where nearly all information was missing.

Lasting Impact

The lasting effect of the Dork Age was a return to print media. While most popular culture(movies, shows, music, etc) is still mostly created and stored digitally, anything deemed particularly important will get an analogue release. Books and newspapers were particularly important, since they could easily be stored in the Library of Arindell. Other cultural treasures saw an effort to preserve and store them in ways that future generations could access without sophisticated technology.