Quote Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster View Post
Wouldn't magnetic tapes be hopelessly degraded by now regardless? I'm puzzled by why the data couldn't be transferred to a more modern format.
Because just like a Titan, this god-machine has momentum and is difficult to stop if you're just one guy.

See, years and years ago, management decided to buy stuff.

Management HATES buying stuff. For other people. It likes buying stuff for itself, but that's another story.

We need data storage, we get data storage.

Now we have data storage.

Along comes the march of time and new software and hardware is created. We could get new and more efficient data storage, but the current stuff does technically work and see line 3.

At this point we're probably 2 new operating systems in and still using the old format.

But the company has grown and many of our systems are now bound like Prometheus to this data storage rock. Moving away from it would require petitioning Zeus or the god-emperor of mankind himself and proving that spending money not just on upgrading the hardware, but also the software used to interface to it and every other piece of technology that it interacts with is worth their money.

We know that it's worth our time, but our time is their money.

And see line 3.