While it sounds reasonable that a large portion of what is recorded today will be available in a 100 years, it is food for thought that it is very difficult to find devices that read media that were very common just a couple of decades ago, like 5 1/4" floppies, not to speak about 8". iomega zip drive? Some data are transferred to new devices when the old ones become obsolete, but lots of it aren't. When the hard drives fade out, who will take responsibility for transferring incredible amounts of data to SSD or whatever is in fashion in ten years from now?
This is the conventional viewpoint, and the stem from which all the negative views of the future branch.
BUT ... The past couple of decades has been a time of enormous change and growth, a turbulent era where standards were not well-formed, or documented, until near the end of it. Where the technology was coming into being, not a stable state.
I think the whole has grown much more sophisticated now, that those who create the systems understand the need for standards and welcome them. I don't think we're headed backwards into a time of chaos and lack of standards. With standards comes future security. The systems are reaching ... not maturity, but critical mass where it becomes difficult to lose the information needed entirely. Unless the catastrophic calamity occurs.
Those who do not understand the systems are likely to get left behind, JUST LIKE how those who did not understand how to protect their film and their prints were in many cases left behind and lost their photos to floods, fires, and other degradation. There's nothing any individual can do about that.
Anything sufficiently valued will be carried forwards. Anything not sufficiently valued will not. Just like it has always been. The technology is different, the ease of access less "natural" but assuming we don't lose the plot entirely, it won't be lost. And if we do lose the plot, well, we've likely going to have lost it all anyway as our survival in the numbers we are now depends upon the complexity of our world as it is for a lot of the basic essentials.
We must all take responsibility to ensure the future. Migrate your data, publish your work, get it into the Library of Congress so that larger organizations curate and caretake it. Think about your exit plan ... What will happen to your photography, the work of your lifetime, when you are no longer around? Do you plan to just dump it on your friends and family, assuming they will value it and take care of it? I do not, I plan to move what I cherish in my work into artifacts, digital and print, that others can cherish past me. Publish or perish, for real.
I refuse to take a negative view of the future. It is the Zeitgeist to do so, but I feel that view is wrong. It's the view of old men not willing to move forward, of adamant conservatism. "I want the world as it was when it was good (when I was a child)."
I don't want a lot of the crap I saw happening when I was a child. I don't want the level of poverty, the fallibility to disease and despair, and the unconnectedness of vast parts of the world that was rampant in the 1950s, 1960s. So much has improved world wide ... with some losses, yes ... but I find it impossible to accept that all is going bad and that the future will be dark, dark, dark forever.
If I accept that belief, what point is there to my photography other than to express my pain and despair? That's not how I want to live. And I won't.
G