I was reading an article on Slashdot today which really got me to thinking. Until about 10 years ago, everything you did to “record” events in your life was stored either on cassette, videotape, or good old fashion film cameras. As far as film was considered, all you did was develop the photograph and you had a permanent record of a specific moment in time. The photo may end up lost, or possibly burned or destroyed, but it was still a physical medium by which you could remember a specific event or period in time. Photographs themselves have existed for a 100 years, but we’re seeing a shift from the conventional photo, to the digital photo. That brings me to the issue every one of us faces: How do you guarantee that those memories will be preserved?
In times past, it was easy. Take a picture, store it in an album, and keep the album. As long as it wasn’t physically destroyed, you could in theory keep that album forever. How many of you have looked through an old relatives photo album and be amazed by the photos from years past? I know I have.
In today’s world, everything has gone digital. Your photos and video are now pretty much stored in some sort of digital format. With the advent of digital technology, photos have become easier to take, and we are now growing a collection that we never had before. Since we don’t have to “develop” them, and we can delete them at will at the time of taking, we take more and more photos and don’t care whether they are good or not, because we can keep them all.
The problem is not in the ability to take them, but the ability to keep them. What do you do with those photos that you want to keep and show your grandkids? Can you be certain that the computer you save them on today will be able to read them in 50 years? Can you be certain that the website you upload them to will still be there in 50 years? These are issues that our generation are going to have to find a solution to.
There are some options. Backups. Back your stuff up on a regular basis so that when things do crash, and they will eventually, you don’t lose everything.
The problem with conventional backups is that for most, it’s kind of a pain. It’s not like putting stuff in an album. It requires you to be vigilant in your efforts to retain your data. You cannot just assume that everything will be fine because at some point or another, your hard drive or computer is going to die and all those great photos you’ve taken over the last 5 years will be gone.
Aside from photos, let’s take a look purely at video. Most digital cameras now come with some sort of “video” recording option. Video cameras themselves are now purely digital with very few of them recording to DVD or miniDV anymore. It’s all hard drive based now, which means that you copy the video from the device to your computer to watch it or burn it off. What happens when the drive fills? You offload the video to PC but you are still left with the same issue as photos. What happens when the drives crash?
Video is in an even worse situation in that camcorders and digital cameras save the video in a specific format. Will computers even be able to play that format in 20 years? At least with VHS or 8mm, and even miniDV, as long as you still had the camcorder, you could play them via a video out cable. But if your computer of the future doesn’t understand what an AVI or MOV file is, or maybe it does and doesn’t understand the encoding method, you won’t be able to watch any of those nice movies and show them off to your kids or grandkids.
The issue of how to retain your digital memories is an issue that is only going to get worse. With more and more things being stored on hard drives, flash drives, SD cards, the less physical media we have. At least with a videotape or a DVD, it’s something that is solid and will hopefully last a long time. Even with VHS tapes, the picture quality of old tapes was garbage, but at least you could still watch them.
What is the solution? I propose this:
“Develop a means of storing digital information in a format that can be retrieved easily at any point in time for the foreseeable future and can be viewed in the same fashion as it was originally intended where the means does not rely on a technology that is subject to rapid advancements that would soon render the format unusable within a short period of time.”
What exactly does that mean? I believe the answer lies in using a combination of both new technology and old school ingenuity. I don’t pretend to know specifically what the answer is, but I do believe that the perfect solution would be the merging of some sort of digital technology with something from ages past. I’m referring to using technology with non-technology elements. Like, say somehow you could store digital information in a block of wood, that could then be re-read by a device that could translate that information into it’s original format. An unlikely solution yes, but the combination of a technological device, with something more natural may in fact provide a perfect means to store digital data for a virtually unlimited amount of time. Could you carve digital information into a stone? A stone is not likely to change in 20 years.
It may sound somewhat archaic to try and use something natural as a means of storing data, but the fact remains that technologies and formats change. How easy is it for you to install a game on your current computer that you may have played 10 years ago? Or for that matter, if you have old Nintendo or Atari cartridges in a box somewhere, can you still play those games? You can if you can find the machine and hook it up. Hell, a lot of modern televisions wouldn’t even be able to hook up to an Atari because they don’t have the proper connectors. Even TV/Game switch boxes are hard to find now. Games aren’t the same as your photos and videos but the principle is the same. I have an entire collection of Faith No More videos that I captured on my computer back in the late 90’s and saved them to CD. I still have all of those videos but I can’t watch any of them because they were saved in a format that is very hard to find now. I even have home movies captured from 1999/2000 that I can’t watch because the video codec was proprietary to the video card I had. I’ve tried everything I can think of and the only thing that plays in those videos is the audio. That’s less than 10 years ago and I can’t watch it. The only saving grace is that I still have the original VHS-C tapes and a VCR. What makes you think your videos will be playable in 20 years? Technology changes fast and if we don’t find a means to save this information in a way that can span the years, it will be lost forever. If you look clearly at the technology of 20 years ago, what from that era still remains solid today?
The only one that really sticks out in my mind as being relatively the same is the telephone. You still pick up the phone, hear a dial tone, dial a number, and talk to someone. Some of the underlying technology has changed, but the basics are still the same. It’s THAT type of innovation that needs to occur to insure that our digital memories are preserved for all time.
At this point in time, I think it’s safe to just “back up” your data when you can and make sure you have more than one backup. Transfer data from one medium to the next until such a time that a permanent solution becomes reality.
For photos and videos, I think it makes sense to print copies of the photos that have the most meaning. At least if the drives go, you lose some of them, but the most precious and the most important ones are still printed, and can be stored safely in a box for future generations to enjoy.
