My brother the academic librarian / archivist has, for many years, been warning about this kind of obsolescence. It's necessary for we software folk to ask ourselves "two centuries from now, how will people make sense of our digital files?"

One of the challenges is, of course, that it isn't obvious to any generation of creators what will be of lasting value.

Academic archivists and MLS degree holders can't do it all, any more than they could control the 19th-century paper factories that churned out all that junk paper that turned brittle in a few decades.