25 years from now....

I've elevated this from the thread on how people organize their pictures as I believe this has broader implications.

Morph said:

I got a REAL LAUGH this afternoon when I was reading the open forum
where I found this topic and that someone said they were worried
about using software to file their pics as they did not know if it
would still be compatible . . . 25 YEARS FROM NOW! Give me a
break, digital technology changes so fast that we will probably be
viewing our pictures as digital holograms in the middle of our
living rooms in the very near future.

Click to expand...

Actually that's a very valid concern. I guess what you were laughing at was thinking that 5 years would probably be asking too much, so 25 hadn't a prayer?

But it does point out a problem digital has that "analog" does not. While photos may get damaged, fade, negatives may get scratched, pictures taken 25 years ago with film or a polaroid have no problem being "accessed" today. You open the album/shoebox/etc and there they are. The negatives can still be taken to a photo store for reprints, scanning, repair, etc.

On the other hand.... while digital allows (theoretically) lossless copying (I always perform byte for byte file compares to be sure), in 25 years will computers be able to read CD-ROMS? or even DVDs? Heck, right now if you're using DVD-R or DVD-RW or DVD+R or DVD+RW you might have trouble finding a compatible reader in much less time. How often will we have to port our entire image collections to a new medium?

The real problem is going to be with "look what we found in the attic". Today it's a treasure trove. Tomorrow it might be tossed without a thought (no idea what's on those gold/silvery discs) or perhaps "how do we get stuff off of these"? Think about it.

If you found say 10 boxes full of 8" floppy discs (yes, I said eight inch), how would you go about finding out what's on them? Oh, and you have some help.... labels indicate that there's some kind of documents on them from a stand-alone Wang word processor on some, and the others are from an Intel "blue box" microprocessor development system.

BTW, those examples are only 15-17 years old, not 25.

Now, the above only deals with the physical medium. Your odds of success long term are probably much less with a given sotware package that uses a proprietary database to track things. A lot of hardware is rapidly becoming obsolete (think parallel port scanners) with Windows XP. While the hardware is perfectly fine, the vendors are either no longer around or have not seen it worthwhile to develop compatible drivers.

Inigo Montoya said:

Morph said:

I got a REAL LAUGH this afternoon when I was reading the open forum
where I found this topic and that someone said they were worried
about using software to file their pics as they did not know if it
would still be compatible . . . 25 YEARS FROM NOW! Give me a
break, digital technology changes so fast that we will probably be
viewing our pictures as digital holograms in the middle of our
living rooms in the very near future.

Click to expand...

Actually that's a very valid concern. I guess what you were
laughing at was thinking that 5 years would probably be asking too
much, so 25 hadn't a prayer?

But it does point out a problem digital has that "analog" does not.
While photos may get damaged, fade, negatives may get scratched,
pictures taken 25 years ago with film or a polaroid have no problem
being "accessed" today. You open the album/shoebox/etc and there
they are. The negatives can still be taken to a photo store for
reprints, scanning, repair, etc.

On the other hand.... while digital allows (theoretically) lossless
copying (I always perform byte for byte file compares to be sure),
in 25 years will computers be able to read CD-ROMS? or even DVDs?
Heck, right now if you're using DVD-R or DVD-RW or DVD+R or DVD+RW
you might have trouble finding a compatible reader in much less
time. How often will we have to port our entire image collections
to a new medium?

The real problem is going to be with "look what we found in the
attic". Today it's a treasure trove. Tomorrow it might be tossed
without a thought (no idea what's on those gold/silvery discs) or
perhaps "how do we get stuff off of these"? Think about it.

If you found say 10 boxes full of 8" floppy discs (yes, I said
eight inch), how would you go about finding out what's on them?
Oh, and you have some help.... labels indicate that there's some
kind of documents on them from a stand-alone Wang word processor on
some, and the others are from an Intel "blue box" microprocessor
development system.

BTW, those examples are only 15-17 years old, not 25.
Now, the above only deals with the physical medium. Your odds of
success long term are probably much less with a given sotware
package that uses a proprietary database to track things. A lot of
hardware is rapidly becoming obsolete (think parallel port
scanners) with Windows XP. While the hardware is perfectly fine,
the vendors are either no longer around or have not seen it
worthwhile to develop compatible drivers.

Click to expand...

--Excellent point. Guess I'd better hang on to my Win98.
Dave Stefanick,
NC4Z
C2100, TCON 14
Bunch of homemade stuff

I know the problem only too well.....

About 14 years ago I had a column in the local newspaper on art and antiques which was prepared on my 286 using Geo-works software (at that time a contender to Windows and backed by IBM) and saved everything on 3.5" disc. A few years later I wanted to review the articles and transfere them to Word files on my 486, needless to say I could not find anything to read the files let alone transfere them to Word documents.

I still have some hard copy of some of the articles which one day I may digitize.......

John Q

--
John Q....C-2100, C-180 and a very old Yashikor wide angle lens
http://www.pbase.com/john_q
http://www.photosig.com/userphotos.php?id=22978

Actually, if you think about it, what the hell good is anything on a 8" floppy disc? How much space was that, 120kb? And a 3.5" floppy....whooooo 1.44 mb.....that is 3/4 of ONE picture....I think the more the medium has gone to the larger end of the spectrum, the easier it will be to pull stuff off of it....

I mean will 650mb be alot of data in 25 yrs? I think it will be enough to warrant a device to allow us to read a CD. if not, as time passes, we(at least I do anyway) transfer things from multiple small storage types(451 floppies holding 650mb of pics) to smaller amounts of large storage types(1CD holding 650mb of pics) so it really wont be an issue, IMO.

Inigo Montoya said:

Morph said:

I got a REAL LAUGH this afternoon when I was reading the open forum
where I found this topic and that someone said they were worried
about using software to file their pics as they did not know if it
would still be compatible . . . 25 YEARS FROM NOW! Give me a
break, digital technology changes so fast that we will probably be
viewing our pictures as digital holograms in the middle of our
living rooms in the very near future.

Click to expand...

Actually that's a very valid concern. I guess what you were
laughing at was thinking that 5 years would probably be asking too
much, so 25 hadn't a prayer?

But it does point out a problem digital has that "analog" does not.
While photos may get damaged, fade, negatives may get scratched,
pictures taken 25 years ago with film or a polaroid have no problem
being "accessed" today. You open the album/shoebox/etc and there
they are. The negatives can still be taken to a photo store for
reprints, scanning, repair, etc.

On the other hand.... while digital allows (theoretically) lossless
copying (I always perform byte for byte file compares to be sure),
in 25 years will computers be able to read CD-ROMS? or even DVDs?
Heck, right now if you're using DVD-R or DVD-RW or DVD+R or DVD+RW
you might have trouble finding a compatible reader in much less
time. How often will we have to port our entire image collections
to a new medium?

The real problem is going to be with "look what we found in the
attic". Today it's a treasure trove. Tomorrow it might be tossed
without a thought (no idea what's on those gold/silvery discs) or
perhaps "how do we get stuff off of these"? Think about it.

If you found say 10 boxes full of 8" floppy discs (yes, I said
eight inch), how would you go about finding out what's on them?
Oh, and you have some help.... labels indicate that there's some
kind of documents on them from a stand-alone Wang word processor on
some, and the others are from an Intel "blue box" microprocessor
development system.

BTW, those examples are only 15-17 years old, not 25.
Now, the above only deals with the physical medium. Your odds of
success long term are probably much less with a given sotware
package that uses a proprietary database to track things. A lot of
hardware is rapidly becoming obsolete (think parallel port
scanners) with Windows XP. While the hardware is perfectly fine,
the vendors are either no longer around or have not seen it
worthwhile to develop compatible drivers.

Click to expand...

--
http://www.daryl.com/2002 - photo calendar
http://www.pbase.com/daryl - pbase supporter
http://www.photosig.com/userphotos.php?id=20092

Proudly shooting with an Olympus C4040, also.

Data you store offline will be lost to obsolescence. Luckily,
the capability to reliably store all data of any value online
has arrived. There are always transition periods in storage
technology. You move your online data to the new technology.
Your offline storage becomes obsolete and the data is lost.
--
Roy F.

daryl.com,

That's exactly what I was thinking as I read through the other posts. I mean the Wizard of Oz is on DVD!

Now, as the technology for storage changes, will we take the time to convert our old stuff to the new medium? Well, these are our photographs! I've read stories of house fires and the only thing they grabbed out of the burning building was the box of photos! I think if you place this high a value on your "memories," then we will be motivated to save our digital memories in a current file format on a current medium.

But I may be wrong.

jim

Sorry. I beg to differ. Look how close Photopoint users came to losing everything? It took some last minute heroics (and $24.95 for the CD ;-) ) for a lot of those folks to avoid losing everything. And while most people haven't had problems... ask Bob S. about Wal-Mart.com.

.... and in 25 years.... will you remember all the places online you stashed your stuff? And what of when we all eventually go to the great photo-shoot in the sky? Will your family know how to get to it?

That's where the "old box of pictures in the attic" really comes into play. We may be vigilant in ensuring our media is current, but what about once we're gone?

Roy F. said:

Data you store offline will be lost to obsolescence. Luckily,
the capability to reliably store all data of any value online
has arrived. There are always transition periods in storage
technology. You move your online data to the new technology.
Your offline storage becomes obsolete and the data is lost.
--
Roy F.

Click to expand...

This is a really interesting delima, however I think that if you look at what film technology has done compared to the rate of change in the digital world you would see that the film has changed formats, media, and the like. You certainly could not take an old photographic plate and expect anyone with todays technology to be able to do anything with it.

This is why it is imperative that we keepers of digital media be ever diligent in maintaining industry standards. As nice as Picture It! is, I don't want to archive my pictures in this format. If we store our images based on widely held standards, then it is reasonable to assume that new technology will at least be backwards compatable for one generation, giving us the oportunity to upgrade.

--
Randy C.
C-2100
San Antonio, TX

Don't worry guys,

after 25 years, we'll be able to buy a wintel pc with a cd-rom drive from e-bay for 9$ and extract all our pics from the cd's.

Myon
Uzi, Pentax 645N & Noblex 150 UX

The digital world allows us to copy our data to new storage technology much easier then analog movies and photos. The most important thing to remember about storing memories on CD's is that you should copy them every 8 to 10 years. My understanding is that the CD's we record on in our computers only have a shelf life of about 10 years.

The other point I would like to make is that the generation twenty-five years from now will know and understand computers much better than we do now. Digital data should also be a lot eaiser and more reliable to maintain.

Shoe boxes full of memories doesn't insure passing those on to the next generation. Only if each generation is concerned with their family tree, then whatever form the history is stored will be cherished and passed on. We alone can only enjoy our family history of today, yesterday, and from years ago through photos, movies, video, and family stories. We know the joy and sometimes the depression we get from viewing old family photos and movies. We all hope that our future generations will find the same joy we do in capturing the moments and trying to perserve the past in order that those memories will last as long as there are furture generations who care about their family history.

So keep shooting pictures and capturing these precious moments to enjoy now and in the future. Take care.

Inigo Montoya said:

.... and in 25 years.... will you remember all the places online
you stashed your stuff? And what of when we all eventually go to
the great photo-shoot in the sky? Will your family know how to get
to it?

That's where the "old box of pictures in the attic" really comes
into play. We may be vigilant in ensuring our media is current,
but what about once we're gone?

Roy F. said:

Data you store offline will be lost to obsolescence. Luckily,
the capability to reliably store all data of any value online
has arrived. There are always transition periods in storage
technology. You move your online data to the new technology.
Your offline storage becomes obsolete and the data is lost.
--
Roy F.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
C700uz, E100rs
http://www.pbase.com/gene
Life is just a stage and we all have enough pictures to proof it!

Inigo Montoya said:

Sorry. I beg to differ. Look how close Photopoint users came to
losing everything? It took some last minute heroics (and $24.95
for the CD ;-) ) for a lot of those folks to avoid losing
everything. And while most people haven't had problems... ask Bob
S. about Wal-Mart.com.

Click to expand...

I guess that goes to show that you get what you pay for. First of all, why would you upload your original images and not keep a copy of them on their PC?

Inigo Montoya said:

.... and in 25 years.... will you remember all the places online
you stashed your stuff? And what of when we all eventually go to
the great photo-shoot in the sky? Will your family know how to get
to it?

Click to expand...

Again, why would you store it online for $$$ when you already paid for your storage device(your pc)

Inigo Montoya said:

That's where the "old box of pictures in the attic" really comes
into play. We may be vigilant in ensuring our media is current,
but what about once we're gone?

Click to expand...

--
http://www.daryl.com/2002 - photo calendar
http://www.pbase.com/daryl - pbase supporter
http://www.photosig.com/userphotos.php?id=20092

Proudly shooting with an Olympus C4040, also.

Perhaps just a little techno hysteria here. Yes, there have been times while the PC age was maturing that some proprietary storage formats became obsolete. Today, with the much wider use of PCs in home and business, can you see HD access processes or .jpg format going away too quickly to respond to? Seems pretty darn unlikely to me.

As I said in the original thread, I keep everything in .jpg format as it came from the camera. I keep duplicates of that entire file structure on a back-up computer (also not so unusual today), and finally I archive to CD-ROM by year annually. If storage technology changes my next annual archive deals with that.

OK … but what about unattended files (people loose interest, die, etc.)?

Well, a bit harder if you discover a box of CD-ROMs in 25 years. I’m not sure how this is necessarily different from the box of photos in the attic though. When my parents passed away I cleaned out their home of 55 years. There were boxes of photos and slides in the attic ranging all the way back to pre WW-I !!! But wait … most (the vast majority) were rendered useless or near useless from several processes: (1) weight of stacking & heat or attic caused photos to stick together beyond salvage, and (2) fading to near invisible. For some 8mm movie films, they were brittle beyond salvage. Some of the oldest documents & photos simply crumbled on touch. I will admit; however, I did salvage some few usable shots of people I have never known.

So, I think long term e-media storage is an issue but not one quite so serious as described here.

That’s the thing about opinions …

--
... Cal
Severna Park, Maryland
(pbase supporter)

Inigo, I think radically different than most on this topic. This in part because I see all the technology that has been left behind with no path for conversion or at best a very arcane path. Digital to me has problems in the way it stores information (a 0 or 1 for every minute bit of information). Many would say this is a strength but I see this signification weakness down the road.

My point is, as we demand more and detail in our images and in our music, and our movies, etc. etc., it is illogical to think that digital technology will be able to support this over the long haul. It is too memory intensive. Even with compression breakthroughs, storage will become a problem, and technology will need to leap into a different direction. Can you imagine the amount of digital memory a 3d hologram would require. Digital will reach a limit as to the amount of detail it can hold, efficiently. Consider some of the upper end digicams today, the image files are enormous -- and that is just 2d.

Just ten years ago we were amazed at video, and watched as VHS and Beta duked it out. Ten years later the technology can not support the demand for detail that is needed. Technology has leaped forward and all that was collected must now be discarded. The same will be true with our digital; 25 years from now, we will have long since discarded our cameras and be forced to select the few images (or records) to convert to the new technology. Our economy is based on this principle.

I wrote this in another thread: "As I read this thread, I'm looking over at a collect of a hundred or so vinyl records. Seldom played. Ah, Hendrix, McCann, and Raitt, once such good friends -- it happened one year when the technology train hit a warp drive and sped off into a new direction. It is the thing about technology, every 5 years or so, it goes into warp drive and all that once was gets left behind . Digital technology? Surely it will not survive for another 10 years -- already we have amassed so much that we now need server-farms to house and file our many things. It is illogical that enough black boxes could be maintained in 10 years to meet the burgeoning demand -- the thousands of digital images. Again, a technological warp drive ... what was once, will be left behind. "

It is storage that to me will be the down fall of digital. Information needs to be stored in something other than fixed containers. Biotechnology is my best quess at this point. Twenty-five years is an enormous amount of time given the warp speed that technological developments are being made. It is this side of the question, 'What will the future bring us?' that is most intriguing. I do not believe it will be digital. Good topic.-- LC

Inigo Montoya said:

Morph said:

I got a REAL LAUGH this afternoon when I was reading the open forum
where I found this topic and that someone said they were worried
about using software to file their pics as they did not know if it
would still be compatible . . . 25 YEARS FROM NOW! Give me a
break, digital technology changes so fast that we will probably be
viewing our pictures as digital holograms in the middle of our
living rooms in the very near future.

Click to expand...

Actually that's a very valid concern. I guess what you were
laughing at was thinking that 5 years would probably be asking too
much, so 25 hadn't a prayer?

But it does point out a problem digital has that "analog" does not.
While photos may get damaged, fade, negatives may get scratched,
pictures taken 25 years ago with film or a polaroid have no problem
being "accessed" today. You open the album/shoebox/etc and there
they are. The negatives can still be taken to a photo store for
reprints, scanning, repair, etc.

On the other hand.... while digital allows (theoretically) lossless
copying (I always perform byte for byte file compares to be sure),
in 25 years will computers be able to read CD-ROMS? or even DVDs?
Heck, right now if you're using DVD-R or DVD-RW or DVD+R or DVD+RW
you might have trouble finding a compatible reader in much less
time. How often will we have to port our entire image collections
to a new medium?

The real problem is going to be with "look what we found in the
attic". Today it's a treasure trove. Tomorrow it might be tossed
without a thought (no idea what's on those gold/silvery discs) or
perhaps "how do we get stuff off of these"? Think about it.

If you found say 10 boxes full of 8" floppy discs (yes, I said
eight inch), how would you go about finding out what's on them?
Oh, and you have some help.... labels indicate that there's some
kind of documents on them from a stand-alone Wang word processor on
some, and the others are from an Intel "blue box" microprocessor
development system.

BTW, those examples are only 15-17 years old, not 25.
Now, the above only deals with the physical medium. Your odds of
success long term are probably much less with a given sotware
package that uses a proprietary database to track things. A lot of
hardware is rapidly becoming obsolete (think parallel port
scanners) with Windows XP. While the hardware is perfectly fine,
the vendors are either no longer around or have not seen it
worthwhile to develop compatible drivers.

Click to expand...

--
El-See
http://www.pbase.com/charette/

I do not understand your reasoning to think digital technology will be eliminated to a newer technology. I know anything is possible, but I think at this point in time it is unlikely. You are talking about machine language, not technology. The advances in technology has allowed us to use digital directly. We are moving into TeraBytes of information.

The lastest Star War movie was shot in digital and shown in digital. I seen the movie projected in digital and it was outstanding.

When you mentioned about vinyl records you didn't mention that the master to these songs are on tape. A lot of old songs have been digitally re-masters for all of our pleasure and enjoyment.

If you understand the enourmous amount of digital information a 64-bit or 128-bit technology can handle, the idea that 0's or 1's are a weakness is absured. Maybe if this thread continues, some of the more technically advanced users will enlighten you to this new technology. It is nothing like Beta vs VHS. That was tape technology and tape may one day go the way of the crystal radio.

BTW, harddrives will be changing soon. The newer drives will be able to hold up to 600Gb of storage with a a transfer rate of 600 mb/sec. With advances like that and faster CPU's and faster and larger ram chips, I think digital technology will be around long after we are all dead buried.

Take care and as you learn, I believe your opinions will change.

--
C700uz, E100rs
http://www.pbase.com/gene
Life is just a stage and we all have enough pictures to proof it!

I couldn't agree with you more. I have had the same kind of experiences over the years. Take care.

cal516 said:

Perhaps just a little techno hysteria here. Yes, there have been
times while the PC age was maturing that some proprietary storage
formats became obsolete. Today, with the much wider use of PCs in
home and business, can you see HD access processes or .jpg format
going away too quickly to respond to? Seems pretty darn unlikely
to me.

As I said in the original thread, I keep everything in .jpg format
as it came from the camera. I keep duplicates of that entire file
structure on a back-up computer (also not so unusual today), and
finally I archive to CD-ROM by year annually. If storage
technology changes my next annual archive deals with that.

OK … but what about unattended files (people loose interest, die,
etc.)?

Well, a bit harder if you discover a box of CD-ROMs in 25 years.
I’m not sure how this is necessarily different from the box of
photos in the attic though. When my parents passed away I cleaned
out their home of 55 years. There were boxes of photos and slides
in the attic ranging all the way back to pre WW-I !!! But wait …
most (the vast majority) were rendered useless or near useless from
several processes: (1) weight of stacking & heat or attic caused
photos to stick together beyond salvage, and (2) fading to near
invisible. For some 8mm movie films, they were brittle beyond
salvage. Some of the oldest documents & photos simply crumbled on
touch. I will admit; however, I did salvage some few usable shots
of people I have never known.

So, I think long term e-media storage is an issue but not one quite
so serious as described here.

That’s the thing about opinions …

--
... Cal
Severna Park, Maryland
(pbase supporter)

Click to expand...

--
C700uz, E100rs
http://www.pbase.com/gene
Life is just a stage and we all have enough pictures to proof it!

I think he's worried that the media that the photos are stored on will be obsolete, gone the way of 5 1/4 disks, etc. It's something to be concerned about.

Gene Miller said:

I do not understand your reasoning to think digital technology will
be eliminated to a newer technology. I know anything is possible,
but I think at this point in time it is unlikely. You are talking
about machine language, not technology. The advances in technology
has allowed us to use digital directly. We are moving into
TeraBytes of information.

Click to expand...

Yes digital is awesome. My point is, unless we can find a way to store digital more efficiently -- it will be a problem for us 25 years from now. Digital works fine today -- but our continual demand for detail, (e.g. 3d, holographs, multimedia. etc.) will make the current storage strategy inefficient. Technology will have to push in a different direction to provide the detail that we will demand, will digital continue to be the universal lanuage? You maybe right, digital could move with the new technology because it is so basic. Given what I have witnessed in my short spand of life (40+ years), I'm just not so sure. But it is exciting times. -- LC
--
El-See
http://www.pbase.com/charette/

Juli, there are always an overlapping of technology change. During that time is when you move your data to the new technology. People are putting old photos, movies and videos on DVD. So I really don't understand the concern, but it does make interesting reading. Take care.

Juli Valley said:

I think he's worried that the media that the photos are stored on
will be obsolete, gone the way of 5 1/4 disks, etc. It's something
to be concerned about.

Click to expand...

--
C700uz, E100rs
http://www.pbase.com/gene
Life is just a stage and we all have enough pictures to proof it!

I don't think the problem will be storage or processing large amount of digital information. Holograms create an interesting technology onto itself. Whether we ever use it for creating entertainment in the middle of our livingrooms or for storage within a crystal cube is far above my knowledge. I have read about these things over forty years ago. You may think technogy moves fast, but being in my mid-sixties I think it moves slow. I have read about LCD television screens over forty years ago also. My source for most of that was in magazines like ScientificAmerican. I think that was the name. I think the biggest problem will be people creating original pieces of art, be it movies, music, novels, paintings, photographics, etc. Time will tell.

El-See said:

Gene Miller said:

I do not understand your reasoning to think digital technology will
be eliminated to a newer technology. I know anything is possible,
but I think at this point in time it is unlikely. You are talking
about machine language, not technology. The advances in technology
has allowed us to use digital directly. We are moving into
TeraBytes of information.

Click to expand...

Yes digital is awesome. My point is, unless we can find a way to
store digital more efficiently -- it will be a problem for us 25
years from now. Digital works fine today -- but our continual
demand for detail, (e.g. 3d, holographs, multimedia. etc.) will
make the current storage strategy inefficient. Technology will have
to push in a different direction to provide the detail that we will
demand, will digital continue to be the universal lanuage? You
maybe right, digital could move with the new technology because it
is so basic. Given what I have witnessed in my short spand of life
(40+ years), I'm just not so sure. But it is exciting times. -- LC
--
El-See
http://www.pbase.com/charette/

Click to expand...

--
C700uz, E100rs
http://www.pbase.com/gene
Life is just a stage and we all have enough pictures to proof it!

Long ago before the dawn of anything digital or film or printed there were scribes who copied documents over and over and over until they died and their sons became scribes and copied the same documents over and over and over until they died and their sons became scribes and copied the same documents over and over and over....(thousands of years go by)...then came the printing press and many more copies of those same documents were etched into plates and then the printers made copies of those same documents over and over and over again until they died and their sons became printers and printed copies of those same documents over and over and over again until they died and their sons became computer programmers and created the first floppy disk (which really was pretty floppy)...then those same documents were copied in large bulk disk copiers until the CD came along and then they were stamped out in many CDs and then the DVD came and those same documents were copied to DVD and then the holographic memory cube came and those documents were copied to holographic memory cubes and then the quantum substrate memory discs came along and those documents were copied to quantum substrate memory discs and then the sun went supernova and those documents were all burned up, but the memory of those documents had been saved to many other worlds via subspace transportation.

Inigo Montoya said:

Morph said:

I got a REAL LAUGH this afternoon when I was reading the open forum
where I found this topic and that someone said they were worried
about using software to file their pics as they did not know if it
would still be compatible . . . 25 YEARS FROM NOW! Give me a
break, digital technology changes so fast that we will probably be
viewing our pictures as digital holograms in the middle of our
living rooms in the very near future.

Click to expand...

Actually that's a very valid concern. I guess what you were
laughing at was thinking that 5 years would probably be asking too
much, so 25 hadn't a prayer?

But it does point out a problem digital has that "analog" does not.
While photos may get damaged, fade, negatives may get scratched,
pictures taken 25 years ago with film or a polaroid have no problem
being "accessed" today. You open the album/shoebox/etc and there
they are. The negatives can still be taken to a photo store for
reprints, scanning, repair, etc.

On the other hand.... while digital allows (theoretically) lossless
copying (I always perform byte for byte file compares to be sure),
in 25 years will computers be able to read CD-ROMS? or even DVDs?
Heck, right now if you're using DVD-R or DVD-RW or DVD+R or DVD+RW
you might have trouble finding a compatible reader in much less
time. How often will we have to port our entire image collections
to a new medium?

The real problem is going to be with "look what we found in the
attic". Today it's a treasure trove. Tomorrow it might be tossed
without a thought (no idea what's on those gold/silvery discs) or
perhaps "how do we get stuff off of these"? Think about it.

If you found say 10 boxes full of 8" floppy discs (yes, I said
eight inch), how would you go about finding out what's on them?
Oh, and you have some help.... labels indicate that there's some
kind of documents on them from a stand-alone Wang word processor on
some, and the others are from an Intel "blue box" microprocessor
development system.

BTW, those examples are only 15-17 years old, not 25.
Now, the above only deals with the physical medium. Your odds of
success long term are probably much less with a given sotware
package that uses a proprietary database to track things. A lot of
hardware is rapidly becoming obsolete (think parallel port
scanners) with Windows XP. While the hardware is perfectly fine,
the vendors are either no longer around or have not seen it
worthwhile to develop compatible drivers.

Click to expand...

--
RichO
San Antonio, TX
http://www.pbase.com/richo/
http://www.richo.org/LearningCenter/faq_olympus.htm
'Life is a dance, Love is the music.'