[pure-silver] Re: Many more images, less meaning
- From: Bob Younger <ryounger@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2012 16:36:25 -0800
Dana,
No doubt if someone is diligent about organizing, annotating, backing-up,
retaining off-site backups, and updating archives as media and formats
change then they can certainly count on having and having access to their
photographs 25 or more years from now. Will their children? Will their
grandchildren? And how many people who take pictures actually follow
through with all those steps. My wife and I now use Mozy; but it's
relatively expensive. And there is no ready, obvious way for my children to
prove that I wanted them to have access to my files and photos if I died
suddenly. And what if I didn't want them to have access? How are Mozy or
Amazon to know? There is no way to differentiate my planned level of access
for each file or folder.
With the photo album, even with fading prints, they'd be able to look
through and read the handwritten notes about Aunt Martha and their
great-aunt Sue. Even if I'm diligent about maintaining my archives, there
is little to no chance that subsequent generations will keep it updated and
available. The photo albums represented a visual, physical infrastructure
that we have not yet replicated for photographs and other digital
artifacts. Some of the photo-sharing sites are a step in the right
direction; but several have already closed their doors. How do I know a
company (SNAPFISH, FB, GOOGLE+, AMAZON Cloud, etc) is going to be around in
10, 15, 25, 50 years? And they have to deal with multi-generational access
and personal identification (we're a long way from everyone having a
personal digital signature). Photo albums were remarkably available to
everyone who came to the house; even after the funeral. There were no
passwords. And if I put something in an album, I clearly intended it for
the family (at least) to share.
Now of course, not everyone was consistent in putting photos in albums and
annotating them. But even if they were still in the envelopes from the drug
store, subsequent generations could look through them.
I know it's complicated. There are huge advantages to digital photography.
And there are certain responsibilities that those who make pictures assume
(consciously or not). But I think the industry needs to solve some of the
basic infrastructure problems to ensure digital photographs have the
historic significance that we've come to count on pictures (and other
digital files) having.
Bob Younger
On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Dana Myers <dana.myers@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 12/1/2012 3:36 PM, Bob Younger wrote:
>
> After the Cedar Fire (OCT 2003) the only photos we had of our kids growing
> up and our first 28 years together were those prints we'd given away to
> people; pictures others had taken of our girls at birthday parties,
> picnics, and church events. I wonder after 25+ years how many digital files
> most people will still be able to find, let alone read.
>
>
> Just to be fair, imagine if you'd made a couple of copies of a digital
> image archive onto
> a few external 1TB drives and given those away. You could have all of your
> archive back
> and make new prints. Even if one of those disk drives failed, you'd still
> have another.
>
> The "wonder if I can still read these files in 25 years" point is valid -
> it's why one
> don't just make one copy of an archive and forget about it. An archive is
> maintained; if file formats change in a substantial way, an archive would
> be
> brought forward - one can probably have a computer do it in most cases.
>
> To the original point, I was recently looking through a large box of old
> photos handed-down since the late 1940s. I can't say the expense of film
> and processing back then kept my parents from taking a lot of meaningless
> photos :-) On the other hand, if that box contained a bunch of Exatron
> Stringy Floppies, I'd never be able to read them.
>
> Dana
>
>
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