The challenge of media storage

I have a Sony DCR-PC9 camcorder circa 2001. Back then, Sony was touting that DV was the next big media for camcorder. Mind you, this is after we owned a Sony Hi-8 only to have a bunch of tapes that we could not play anywhere... I do like the DCR-PC9 for its user-friendly interface and its compact size. However, Sony decided to use FireWire to download to a computer. Guess what, majority of the new laptops/desktops eschew FireWire in favor of high speed USB. Go figure... Luckily, when we upgraded our desktop, we decided to turn it into a Unix - Ubuntu - machine since I wanted to get to know Unix again. Our desktop does have a FireWire card. It took awhile but I was able to get the video off the camcorder using Kino Video Editor since it has a native FireWire support and export to MPEG. Once I have a MPEG file, Ubuntu lets me burn it on a CD and I was able to play it on my Windows machine. This process gets me thinking... I wonder how much data left hanging out there??? Remember the floppy disk? 3.5" diskette? Zip drive? Jazz drive? Tape drive? CD is on its way to the grave due to the popularity of DVD. What about thumb drive? External hard drive? How could a layman keep up with these changes? Someone might say online storage is the future... This could be the answer but I don't think the process of using online storage simple enough for my father-in-law to use.