technology boon or bane?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I fear for the future generation who THINKS that their baby pictures and other important memories will be preserved to the same degree as they have been in the film days. I say this because I see my friends using cell phones and p&s cameras like crazy and RARELY print anything out. I keep telling them, "If you don't print it, you won't have it in 20 years time". They roll their eyes and keep snapping.

Even I, as a professional who backs up files, uses online storage, etc., look down the road and wonder if when I'm long gone, will anyone even be able to access my digital files? If I were trying to find a file to reprint even now, I'm overwhelmed at the prospect of wading through all my digital files, however well organized they may be. Add 20 more years to that mess? Will my grandchildren understand how to access them, where they are, etc. I doubt it, so I make prints of all my favorites and do a once yearly large photobook and stick it in the closet. At least they will have THAT.

Well most of my baby pictures are all faded and yellow now, so I don't know how well preserved I'd call them. At least with digital pictures, they can be preserved with 100% accuracy indefinitely as long as someone keeps moving to current storage systems. Also, people tend to email them around so many of those pictures will live on forever even if the full resolution original got destroyed. My biggest fear for people who only keep one copy on their PC's hard drive and never bother to make even a single backup copy but that applies to any computer data.

I'm not sure that the technology will change that much that fast (if at all) that you won't have time to convert them to a newer format.

Many threads on the topic, in the past. I, myself, have raised the issues in the past...

• Accessability of the media in the future (how many QIC or SA-400 interface tape units cannot even be connected to today's computer, because the interface cards do not fit?!)
  
  
• Future readbility of the media (how many burnable CDs and DVDs with data which cannot be read -- there are stories of lost PhD thesis materials as a result! And even magnetic media is prone to oxide flaking off the substrate.)
  
  
• Future software to decode the files (when will Canon drop support for early digital camera RAW files, will Canon continue to be in the digital camera business 50 years into the future; Minolta ceased to exist as a camera brand, and Sony bought up the camera products...what about the Minolta digital camera files?!)
  
  
• Will my heirs even care enough to be bothered with migrating my digital photo archives to newer and current media, after I am gone?!
  
• And if I captured an important moment in history, will historians in 2110 be able to get at the photos?
  

As mike_d mentioned, old faded and yellow pics isn't exactly "preserved". At least not well. Plus, an advantage with digital is that you can have multiple copies and back-ups, whereas with film you generally had one print and maybe one negative... though most people never saved their negatives. If you lost it, or it were destroyed, you were simply SOL.

I believe that digital provides people a better opportunity to preserve their pics... but will they?

suecassidy wrote in post #11416647
I doubt it, so I make prints of all my favorites and do a once yearly large photobook and stick it in the closet. At least they will have THAT.

Unless you suffer theft, fire or flood.

Honestly though, I have some 25 year old music CD's that don't play anymore, granted they spent time in a dirty pick-up truck truck CD player, but it does scare me that as usual, man didn't think this all the way through first, before implementing it.

Most people do not backup their material, and those who do will still have to continue to make backups of backups. Never mind changing technologies, if you have a file on three hard discs, expect none of those hard drives to be operating within five to ten years. They might be working, but don’t count on it. CDs and DVDs are even more susceptible to time-induced corrosion.

The good news: flash memory is hopefully going to improve stability, but right now, it is still cost prohibitive for most folks when dealing with terabyte storage needs. Also, posting photos on Flicker, Smugmug, and such will, as mentioned above, at least preserve a fairly high resolution copy off site.

As is stands, within the next five years and thereafter, numerous people are going to start losing their music, video, and photographic catalogs.

I print my favorite material, but not just for archival purposes, but because it is the ultimate output in terms of quality.

I’m just glad I’ve got negatives, prints, and digital copies.

I'm accumulating enough images to publish a dozen copies of a book for my immediate heirs as I cherish what my parents left me,
beyond that, I think we overvalue the quality of our output.

I am seriously thinking of creating a coffee table book type of album for each trip I make...compile the very best shots I have and put it in a shelf... I shoot as a hobbyist, I might do it if I find the time

Bosscat wrote in post #11418229
man didn't think this all the way through first, before implementing it.

Great reply. If man had actually took a step back and thought about things we may be seeing a totally diferent world. There is something to be said, both positive and negative, about the damn the torpedoes full speed ahead attitude of society.

Sure the prints that we have are sometimes torn, yellowed and otherwise show their years. Somehow this is part of the allure of being able to pull out the shoebox and sit in the living room with the kids going through them laughing and crying at what we find in there. I have a 30 year old daughter that does this regularly yet when I ask her how often she visits a private family gallery her answer is only when I send her something. I don't see families gathering around a monitor to reminisce.

I tend to agree to a certain degree with the OP but what are we to do now. There is no turning back the clock on those photos that have been lost, deleted or damaged in our various electronic gadgetry. I'm as guilty as everyone else for no printing anything out except the most precious, funny or embarrassing to family members. I have gone to great lengths to preseve digital copies but once I am gone who knows what will happen to them.

as well they should. it's fun to paw through pictures, it's annoying to 'view' them. why is that? the 'new' slide show is sticking an SD card in your wii/PS3 and letting it display on your big screen tv. going thought family albums is the PS3/Xbox/Smart TV, browsing through your media store on your PC.

so, embrace the future! get into the habit of tagging everything.
and look into cloud storage.

IF your organization is simply tagging, the machine handles pretty much everything else.

cloud storage is distributed , protected, backed up,practically free, and accessible from anywhere you can get network access.

if your looking for stock tips, look at the companies that make storage systems. they all have half year backlogs of orders

as far as the ability of future system to read the images? jpg seems to be 'the standard'. since it's scalable to ridiculously large sizes, it's reasonable to bet that future players will be able to easily 'play' 20 or 50 year old jpg files. (think of the modern CD player that will play 'old' CDs as well as CDs you burn with 10 hours of MP3s on them)

I'm going to take the cynic's view and say "Who cares?"

When I'm gone, it's no longer my worry and my wife has said she'll probably just give a lot of my images to the places where I took them and be done with them.

ssim wrote in post #11420236
Sure the prints that we have are sometimes torn, yellowed and otherwise show their years. Somehow this is part of the allure of being able to pull out the shoebox and sit in the living room with the kids going through them laughing and crying at what we find in there. I have a 30 year old daughter that does this regularly yet when I ask her how often she visits a private family gallery her answer is only when I send her something. I don't see families gathering around a monitor to reminisce.

Real life is about aging, and nothing rocks it old school like a mid fifties black and white print. There is an almost magical quality that digital has yet to replicate.

I miss the days when we'd fire up the slide projector and view 3-5 rolls from various events.

I do print a fair number of shots, and back up everything in triplicate. One copy here, one at moms, and a third on a HD, that when full, will be stored at my sisters.

As somebody who has printed a large number of 16x20 and larger prints for others, there is something special about the look in their eyes when they see themselves in a large print, that you wouldn't get on a screen this sized.

And afterall, they wrote a song about Kodachrome, will the same be said about digital?