Ok everyone has dozens of devices now capable of recording video/audio/photos digitally, and dozens of storage devices. SD cards are as cheap as a burger, external hard drives are cheap.
What do you think the average experience will be like in a couple decades? Will people have tons of video/audio/photos of dead relatives they never met? Look up what your dad was posting to message boards at age 13?
Here’s my guess. I think our ability to view say, digital pictures 20 years from now will diminish from our ability today to view old printed photos from decades ago. As an example, old photographs may be placed in a book or drawer and remain there for years. Even though some deterioration occurs, for the most part they are still recognizable. Add to that, viewing old photographs required no device to display them other than simply looking at them. Images captured and stored on electronic devices may not enjoy the same fate due to device failure/replacement rate unless the user continues to transfer them to replacement devices.
Digital images can be stored elsewhere but periodic maintenance will be necessary to ensure they are not lost through obsolescence and/or electronic deterioration. Images stored online are subject to the profitability of the host site and if one shuts down their servers, your graphics may be lost. Facebook has millions of photos. Will Facebook be here 20 years from now?
I’m attempting to predict the future and naturally could be off the mark by anywhere from 1% to 100% because the near future could hold promise of storage devices that may solve all of these issues.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I have folders full of photos on my hard drive (and backed up elsewhere as well) that I’ve been copying from computer to computer for a decade; I don’t think I’ve even looked at them since I got my latest PC a year ago, but they’re still here. There’s no reason I won’t still have them on whatever computer I own 20 years from now. And they won’t deteriorate simply because I change computers every two or three years anyway, long before the disk starts to fail.
I’m sure you’re not alone in your efforts but in order to keep your photos you put forth the necessary steps to keep them but I’m not sure you’re in the majority. I guess one point I was suggesting is that with old hard copy photos, no additional steps are needed to maintain them. If you store them and do nothing, chances are good they’ll be there in 50 years. With stored digital, extra steps are needed and with humans being what we are, this is the link in the chain that may well break when coupled with the fact that hard drives and storage devices have been known to fail.
Just my opinion and for the sake of posterity, I hope I’m wrong…