Doomed to delete history?

Today's technology has proved to be a double-edged sword: There's no dispute that it has improved our lives, but it also has caused us to lose history as fast as we make it.

Correspondence is by e-mail; hit delete and it's wiped out. Thousands of photographs are taken; few are printed. Official records are increasingly digital.

With our fingers poised over the delete button, what will be left of our culture for historians?

Scientists say we have to take steps now to preserve our footprint, so that future generations will know how we evolved.

"Are we losing history? Every day," said Rob Spindler, university archivist and head of Archives and Special Collections at Arizona State University Libraries. "The loss of history is a matter of neglect."

The problem is twofold: scarcity and abundance....