Will Digital Images Survive a Century? (Page 2): Thanks to all who have replied so far. I hope to read many more postings. I am pleasantly surprised at the tone of most of the replies.

JudyTee23 Loc: Eastern U. S.

Thanks to all who have replied so far. I hope to read many more postings.

I am pleasantly surprised at the tone of most of the replies. I thought I would receive some very vigorous defenses of the digital medium. Such has not been the case.

Maybe the old methods will win out in the end?

Thanks, everyone. I will be watching.

RaydancePhoto

Kuzano wrote:

I encourage you, of all postings on this thread, to google or yahoo the terms:

CD Rot
DVD Rot

Particularly with reference to specialty long term archival products. You may be partially right, but it's still and interesting exercise.

I know CD rot very well, I have experienced it.

wikipedia

A gold CD is one in which gold is used in place of the super pure aluminium commonly used as the reflective coating on ordinary CDs or silver on ordinary CD-Rs

The gold coats more evenly and reacts with oxygen more slowly, thus reducing CD rot and providing greater longevity[citation needed].

Some gold CD's have an average life span of 300 years, but that still does not guarantee that there will be anything to play them on.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

JudyTee23 wrote:

...I am concerned about the obvious ephemeral qualities of digital imagery. ....

The issue is not digital imagery itself, which should be relatively permanent. There will probably always be software that can convert a digital image (jpg, tiff, etc.) to a visible and printable image.

The problem is the medium on which the image is stored. New media become available all of the time and old media do not disappear overnight. So the solution is to remain vigilant and migrate to the newer medium after it has become accepted and before your old medium goes away. You are probably thinking, "Duh, that's obvious."

But the question now will be who is going to be around to do this conversion and maintain this digital permanence? If you dont do it yourself will it be done by your successors? I guess that depends

P.S.: Don't expect a cloud solution to provide any permanence. Companies can disappear faster than media.

charles brown Loc: Tennesse

OK, it appears that the general consensus is that the use of digital media for long term storage is risky at best. So what is the answer? I do know that historians are very concerned about the use of e-mail instead of letters to communicate. Same goes for government records, communications, etc. I often enjoy going through the album I have of old family photographs, some of which are 100 years old. Am fortunate that my ancestors were frequent picture takers. And the use of smartphones to take photographs is also causing alarm inasmuch as a large majority are already being lost. Again, what is the answer? Makes me sad to think that my grandchildren and great grandchildren may not have availabe to them the recorded history that I currently enjoy. Maybe a device that transfers digital pictures to film isnt such a bad idea after all.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Kuzano wrote:

Now add to the list....

IBM punch card
Cassette tape for Cassette disk (Media for Texas Instruments TI99A computer)
Micro Cassette Tape for hand recorder.
8 inch floppy disk
5 1/4 inch floppy disk
DAT tape cassette
Zip Drive Disk
Jazz Drive Disk
Flash Media memory card (camera)
Compact Flash Card?? still in use somewhat

There is more, your post is a good start.

Let's not forget film. It's already hard to process B&W and color has to be sent out. If its not scanned it's almost impossible to print.

In 25 years most of us old film guys will be gone or at least have lost interest. At that point the knowledge itself will be lost.
Better print them now if you want it around in 25 years, let alone 100.
It was only about 125 years ago that Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and the light bulb. A lot of water has passed under that technology bridge. I can't even fathom where we will be in a hundred more.

deej

RaydancePhoto wrote:

I know CD rot very well, I have experienced it. br... (show quote)

True. Similar to many others post about having all the old media players that still work but the media has moved on. There is one media called M-Disc (http://www.mdisc.com/) claiming 1000 years and uses a reasonably priced burner to make them but can be read on any CD player. Here again, the media will probably change and leave us with issues of converting it all to a newer type. Nothing new, heck, look at our camera's, film to digital, processing fluids etc......

Dr_Steve Loc: Between keyboard & chair (Reston, VA)

RaydancePhoto wrote:

There are gold CD's and DVD's that will store data for over 100 years. They are expensive, but will save your precious data for much longer than standard CD/DVD.

Are there certain brands that are recommended over others?

charles brown Loc: Tennesse

As an afterthought. When the grandchildren visit they enjoy looking through our photo albums with me. Yet none of their parents are keeping or plan to have a photo album. Everything is stored on either a cell phone or iPad. I suspect that they are the norm, not the exception to the norm. Sometimes technology has its unanticipated consequences. Looks like we have one.

deej

Dr_Steve wrote:

Are there certain brands that are recommended over others?

Decent link for that answer(http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/cd-rw.html)

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

charles brown wrote:

As an afterthought. When the grandchildren visit they enjoy looking through our photo albums with me. Yet none of their parents are keeping or plan to have a photo album. Everything is stored on either a cell phone or iPad. I suspect that they are the norm, not the exception to the norm. Sometimes technology has its unanticipated consequences. Looks like we have one.

I believe, Charles, that you are correct and it is sad. When my mother-in-law passed away a few years ago, there were photos of her from the 1920's to the present. What a wonderful way to celebrate and remember her life.

So in the future the family at the passing of a loved one can point to the corrupted CD taped to the wall and tell everyone that photos of Grandpa are on that plate-thing but we don't know how to see them. :-) Really sad.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

charles brown wrote:

. Maybe a device that transfers digital pictures to film isnt such a bad idea after all.

Now thats thinking out of the box (pun intended). I like it, even if you are being facetious.

But there is degradation introduced with a change of format. At least this doesnt happen with digital unless you compress as with jpeg.

Maybe an even more radical approach stay with film and just scan it to make printing easier. There are some real aesthetic advantages to film that insure it will be around for several decades at least longer than you and me, and I am not assuming that you are old.

deej

CaptainC wrote:

I believe, Charles, that you are correct and it is sad. When my mother-in-law passed away a few years ago, there were photos of her from the 1920's to the present. What a wonderful way to celebrate and remember her life.

So in the future the family at the passing of a loved one can point to the corrupted CD taped to the wall and tell everyone that photos of Grandpa are on that plate-thing but we don't know how to see them. :-) Really sad.

Strange that you should mention this, when my mother passed and the family was sorting through items to take, the photo albums were overlooked. Fortunately, I picked them all up and brought them home. A few years later, everyone was completely astonished when I sent them all Christmas gifts of digital copies of all the photo's. I have since restored the books and sheet protectors for necessary longevity. Captain, you are so right about the shame of what most of society is doing with all the memories being captured today. I see a possible lost time of mankind looming due to the digital age.

heyrob Loc: Western Washington

CaptainC wrote:

I understand. Still a STUPID idea. Will your great grandchildren have the Machine to access them.

Nothing beats paper prints in an album or even a shoe box.

Very true! My father wrote a book (a western) back in the late 1970's (all by hand) and then his mother in law (my step-mother's mother) then transcribed those hand written pages to 5-1/4" floppies on an Apple 2C computer. Lucky for him he had several manuscripts printed, because we have yet to find anyone would can read those old floppies and perhaps save them in a pdf format.

Sadly, although many who have read the manuscript thought it was better than Zane Gray, he's never found a publisher to print the book. Westerns just don't sell now days.

The point is that technology advances quickly and what is saved today may not be recoverable tomorrow. It may become an exercise in copying from yesterday's media to tomorrow's before you can't read the old one anymore.

Zero_Equals_Infinity Loc: Canada

Redundancy of storage will help. Legacy formats of the images themselves will still be readable, and if you want you can make physical prints and digital negatives. (I make those for Palladium / Platinum printing, and those prints last for a very, very, long time.)

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

Zero_Equals_Infinity wrote:

Redundancy of storage will help. Legacy formats of the images themselves will still be readable, and if you want you can make physical prints and digital negatives. (I make those for Palladium / Platinum printing, and those prints last for a very, very, long time.)

That is the theory. If it were up to the people on the forum, then perhaps - the problem is with kids, grandkids, cousins, etc., to be the ones to be tuned into "legacy formats." I can guarantee that most will not follow through. Fifty years from now that family will have NO visual history.

Now the Platinum/Palladium prints...that is one great way to go!