Kat's query about memory sticks... such devices are designed for transferring data between computers, not as long-term storage. They can fall over and die without warning!! Don't rely on them for important backups, as you'll never retrieve the data when they fail - at least there is an outside change of retrieving data from a crashed hard drive.

Unfortunately, nothing can be considered permanent - vinyl has its problems, shellac was very brittle, audio tapes (and floppy disks/Zip disks) vary wildly in their longevity, hard drives stop working, CDs and DVDs aren't anything like as permanent or indestructible as early hype would have had you believe...

Perhaps we should cryogenically preserve the people themselves wherever possible, then stick them in a microwave and defrost 'em when a permanent recording medium is eventually found!

Meanwhile, do what George P suggests - write it somewhere, then later, write it somewhere else, and keep doing that to keep the memories alive.