[RioRico]

Losing our digital memory - CNET Australia

How do you preserve your images for the long term? What will you give your children, grandchildren? How fast does memory evaporate?

[SpecialK]

What was that, again...?

[alohadave]

Most pictures aren't worth saving. The ones that made it through time, are only valuable because of their relative rarity. They really only have value to the families of the people in them.

I have no illusions that my descendents will treasure my pictures other than as curiosities.

[reeftool]

Most pictures aren't worth saving. The ones that made it through time, are only valuable because of their relative rarity. They really only have value to the families of the people in them.

I have no illusions that my descendents will treasure my pictures other than as curiosities.

I would disagree. While none of my pictures will ever likely become famous, they have much value among family. Our captured moments are often precious memories and they will have value to future generations as old snapshots today are important. When watching newscasts of natural disasters, the one thing mourned the most (I'm talking stuff, not lives lost) is often the family photo albums. I was reading in our local news today of many people walking the banks of the rivers that flooded during Irene looking for lost photos as well as other items.

[George Lama]

Humanity, some cultures more than others, like to have a link to the past, a way of looking back through time to get in touch with their history, their ancestors. Back in the day, stories were all we had, and those were passed from generation to generation.

Then came paintings and sculptures. However, only when cameras became readily available did people begin in earnest to attempt to preserve their memories for future generations, sometimes going as far as photographing the dead, the mundane, and even things considered objectionable by cultural standards of the day.

In this digital age, we seldom make prints of photos, not giving a second thought to the fragility of digital storage, particularly considering most people just keep every photo on their home computer, in their cell phones, or digital camera.

In this day and age it's amazing that there is still only one media that could ensure images are available to future generations... good ole paper.

[RioRico]

In this day and age it's amazing that there is still only one media that could ensure images are available to future generations... good ole paper.

And tee-shirts.

I used to work with the gum-bichromate process, which allows for 3D printing. Some few individuals work with photo-sensitized materials: clays, fabrics, metals, etc. Now exist dedicated 3D printers, which can build images as bas-relief sculptures. But yeah, most of our digital imagery is ephemeral, meant to vanish in the evaporating digital cloud. Are those memories worth saving? That may be a Darwinian question -- some survives, some doesn't, by criteria other than worthiness. Tricky, eh?

[SpecialK]

In this day and age it's amazing that there is still only one media that could ensure images are available to future generations... good ole paper.

Not unless it is archively treated and stored under controlled conditions.

[Stone G.]

I know for sure that the hard disks and flash memories as well as CD's and DVD's that currently store my images will loose their memory; that this tecnology will be come obsolete and that equipment for reading these media will be hard to find elsewhere than in museums before we are well into the next generation. (Everybody who knows raise their hands: Do you know what a floppy disk drive is?)

But I do not know for sure whether each and all of the images that I have uploaded to the internet will ever vanish for ever. Hasn't someone said: "The internet vever forgets" ?

[George Lama]

Not unless it is archively treated and stored under controlled conditions.

Yes indeed, however you could place SD cards and USB drives, hard drives, and even SSD drives in the same conditions and those have a better chance of failing than paper

[twitch]

I think it's a real issue. As well as the usual backups on site and off site, I create numerious photobooks each year. One for each holiday we take, one for each child for the year, and a "family photo album" for the year. I think it's sad that probably 90% of families these days no longer have tangable photo albums that can picked up off the bookself and browsed through.

[Wheatfield]

In this day and age it's amazing that there is still only one media that could ensure images are available to future generations... good ole paper.

Not unless it is archively treated and stored under controlled conditions.

Paper prints stand a better chance of lasting several generations than digital media unless the processing was off spec. All thos pictures in boxes under people's beds from early last century is testament to the longevity of paper prints. OTOH, I've had CDs that were less than 5 years old become corrupted and unreadable, and hard drives will fail at some point.
Digital is only a better storage medium if someone is there to mother hen the media and make sure it stays intact.

But I do not know for sure whether each and all of the images that I have uploaded to the internet will ever vanish for ever. Hasn't someone said: "The internet never forgets" ?

It may not forget, but it may not be able to find your stuff for you, either.
And, when the company that hosts the server changes hardware, they might look at the files manager of their hard drive to see what hasn't been accessed for a while and just nuke those files.

I think it's a real issue. As well as the usual backups on site and off site, I create numerious photobooks each year. One for each holiday we take, one for each child for the year, and a "family photo album" for the year. I think it's sad that probably 90% of families these days no longer have tangable photo albums that can picked up off the bookself and browsed through.

I do have to wonder how permanent photo books are. They are pretty much just fancy inkjet prints. The same with the new generation photolabs that are using thermal transfer of colour dye rather than wet processing.
The technology hasn't proven itself yet. Even when colour was relatively new, there were problems. E-4 process slides had a bad habit of fading to clear acetate (in dark storage), and an early run of Agfa paper ended up fading out after a very short period of time, like a few years. Even Kodachrome will fade if left in the light.
OTOH, it's still a better solution than digital from a forget about it and hope it's still there in 50 years POV.

[JenniferLeigh]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I never had the chance to meet my grandfather, but he was a photographer and when my grandmother passed away I inherited most of his slides/negatives and photography gear.

I think about when I die, what will happen to my photography? Even if I keep up with changing media and multiple backups - will anyone else? Will my husband if I die young? Will my children?

Prints are a lot easier to store and forget about. I remember bringing up the projector for my grandmother and showing her the slides that she hadn't seen in about 20 years. If my grandfather shot digital, chances are they wouldn't be around today.

I think I should start printing my favorites and archiving in albums. At least then I'll leave something to pass on that doesn't require maintenance. I have barely printed since making the switch to a digital, I've got a lot of catching up.

[MRRiley]

Everybody who knows raise their hands: Do you know what a floppy disk drive is?

Got ya beat... Raise your hand if you know what CORE Memory is... This is a 1kb module from a Univac 1050 mainframe computer. It is 4 inches on a side. It took a refrigerator sized cabinet of these to provide 512 megabytes in the late 70s.

[Wheatfield]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I never had the chance to meet my grandfather, but he was a photographer and when my grandmother passed away I inherited most of his slides/negatives and photography gear.

I think about when I die, what will happen to my photography? Even if I keep up with changing media and multiple backups - will anyone else? Will my husband if I die young? Will my children?

Prints are a lot easier to store and forget about. I remember bringing up the projector for my grandmother and showing her the slides that she hadn't seen in about 20 years. If my grandfather shot digital, chances are they wouldn't be around today.

I think I should start printing my favorites and archiving in albums. At least then I'll leave something to pass on that doesn't require maintenance. I have barely printed since making the switch to a digital, I've got a lot of catching up.

I am starting to have the same thoughts, though I don't have kids to pass anything on to. However, my wife is one step off of being a Luddite, so if I pop off tomorrow, any images that I've made since 2002 when I switched to digital would be lost in pretty short order.
Not that I have any pretensions about any of my pictures being all that important, but I am archiving several weddings now in the event that my clients' digital media stops working.
When digital first hit the market in a big way some 8 or so years ago, Kodak came up with a slogan to the effect of "If you don't have a picture, you don't get the picture" or some such. Now this was an attempt to prop up what we saw in the industry as an immediate drop in print sales, but there is more truth to that slogan than one might care to admit.
If all you have is some numbers on a computer media, you don't have a picture, you have something that, down the road might be nothing.

Get your prints done, but do ask the lab if they are doing wet prints or are they a dry lab.
And go with the wet lab. I have a feeling that they will be more stable over the long haul. At the very least, i won't trust dry lab prints for a few years until they prove they have some staying power.

[RoxnDox]

Got ya beat... Raise your hand if you know what CORE Memory is... This is a 1kb module from a Univac 1050 mainframe computer. It is 4 inches on a side. It took a refrigerator sized cabinet of these to provide 512 megabytes in the late 70s.

My first assignment in the USAF was programming a close descendant of that beastie (Univac 1100s) - they had at least graduated from the core memory. The Air Weather Network (AWN) facility in Texas was still using drum storage the year before I went in...

This thing weighed a couple of tons, and held approximately 90 MB (in 36-bit words):