Are presets the modern day equivalent of a tracking sheet?

By 'Presets' do you mean Session files for our DAW's because they contain that sort of information.
 
The old tracking sheet may or may not have contained all the information about the signal chain that came after the track from the multitrack. You could squeeze some info in there too. At least with the old tracking sheet it can be read by everyone 20 years later.
 
Our DAW files can I think also contain as much information as you care to put in there. You can label tracks and clips and you should know what sound is going to come out of any track. A DAW session can also have nothing info wise in it too and you still have to play the track to hear what is on it. Then there is the issue of plugins and their settings.
 
Then will we be able to open our DAW sessions in 20 years time if we had to? Do we need to consolidate everything at least into wave files etc so we can at least do that in other software. At least we can now print stems and effects only stems and things and be able to recreate mixes again much later down the track if we have to. I put word docs in my sessions which have quite a bit of info in there. We should be able to open those at least in 20 years time.