www.digicult.info/downloads/digicult_info1_newsletter.pdf">DigiCULT.Info (July 2002; Adobe Acrobat PDF file) . Quoting Professor Duranti from the forum's newsletter information page,

"The fast pace with which the technology for creating and recording of information is developing, threatens the authenticity of records. Archivists, and governments, and other institutions, who rely on these records are losing control, I would not hesitate to call the situation disastrous."

Titled "How Serious Is the Threat?", Professor Duranti's interview ends with these ominous words,

"We have to succed. If not, chances are that societies may come to a grinding halt, because the authenticity of official records cannot be guaranteed anymore. That is how serious it is, at the moment."

Professor Duranti teaches at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), and directs the InterPARES research project.

InterPARES stands for International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems. InterPARES grew out of an earlier project, The Preservation of the Integrity of Electronic Records (The UBC Project), which resulted in a records management standard (5015.2) adopted by the United States Department of Defense.

Officially launched on January 1, 1999, the second phase of InterPARES began on January 1, 2002 and will continue to the end of 2006. Since InterPARES approaches the issue of a digital future from a research methodology, by 2006 the social disorder predicted by Professor Duranti may already be upon us.