Filed under the Museum of Obsolete Media stability scale · rating 3, moderate risk · age 0 of 200 days
The specimen. This section survives the schedule.
| Medium | World Wide Web page (HTML, uncompressed) |
|---|---|
| Written | 4 August 2026, once |
| Kept in | solid-state storage in a data centre, in the same building as the rest of myfl.uk |
| Copies | one. The site keeps no archive |
| Read by | a browser, on demand |
| Catalogue entry | Compact Disc-Recordable (CD-R, 1992–), the closest listed format |
The recordable compact disc is the closest entry in the Museum’s catalogue: written once, read many times, its dye layer able to break down, and readable only while the equipment to read it exists. The Museum rates it 3, moderate risk, and says of that rating: “Some risk of degradation, and early examples of this format may be reaching the end of their expected lifespan.” This page accepts the rating.
The catalogue gives the disc a risk category, not a year count. This page therefore sets its own schedule, stated plainly: 200 days, with one day standing for about a month of a disc’s working life. The arithmetic is on the server clock. It does not pause when the page is closed.
Held in a temperature-controlled data centre with the rest of myfl.uk. Climate is not the problem. The schedule is.
The Museum notes that even stable media become unreadable when the equipment to read them is scarce. The equipment for this medium is a browser. Browsers are still abundant. This will not always be true.
The catalogue’s words for the next step up are that migration needs to take place soon. None is planned. The site keeps no archive, and this page is its own archive until it is not. When content is lost it is not re-burned; the record of the loss is the record.
| Age | 0 days |
|---|---|
| Expected lifespan | 200 days |
| Rating | 3, moderate risk |
| Recorded sections remaining | 6 of 6 |
The medium’s own log. Each loss is dated by the day of the medium’s life on which it occurred.
No losses recorded. The medium is within its expected lifespan.
This note is printed on the case, not burned onto the disc, so it outlasts the content. The page is not a disc. It is a web page that has filed itself under a real museum’s rating scale long enough to show what the rating means. The decay is real in the sense that matters: it is computed from the server clock, it is the same for every visitor, and reloading does not restore what is gone. The page holds nothing about you. The scale is the Museum of Obsolete Media’s; the schedule is this page’s own.
Back to the index.