A new way to stop digital decay Sep 15th 2005 From The Economist print edition Computing: Could a “virtual computer”, built from software, help to save today's digital documents for historians of the future? WHEN future historians turn their attention to the early 21st century, electronic documents will be vital to their understanding of our times. Old web pages may not turn yellow and brittle like paper, but the digital documents of today's culture face a more serious threat: the disappearance of computers able to read them. Even a relatively simple electronic item, such as a picture, requires software...