[a fool in paradise]

"I’m a fan of the download. I like to hit enter and have the song appear on my iTunes within seconds, but there’s something about holding the artifact, about feeling it in your hand. It reveals a lot about the moment in time that the record was made. An abstract song could come from anywhere, but if you see something in a twelve-inch vinyl LP, with the cover art, or you hear the scratch in the 78, you get a sense of time and place that is, for me, irreplaceable."

Wax, shellac, and vinyl have gone through some format changes over time (cylinders of 2 playing lengths, pathe/edison/"standard" 78s (each played with a different stylus, Brunswick DID make a combination player). Even with the shift to wax there was a format war over 331/3 LP/EP vs 45single (or boxed album of singles). BUT in the end, dominant technology permitted you to play 78s from the 1910s-2011 LP/singles all on one contemporary turntable.

I question whether today's mp3s will still be supported by playing technology in 2110. And you certainly won't be able to reverse engineer a player from physical parts.

[Tublecane]

“dominant technology permitted you to play 78s from the 1910s-2011 LP/singles all on one contemporary turntable”

While it may be true that you have been able to play LPs on the same piece of equipment for that span of years, it is beyond reason to suggest any but the most assiduously preserved specific records remained playable for a similar span of time. For unlike digital ones, physical copies are prone to entropy.

It may be as you say, of course, that technology shifts will make irrelevant our digital copies. Be that as it may, almost certainly none of your LPs will survive to 2110.