[Leica] So much for "film is forever"

[Spencer Cheng]

Oral tradition is a lost tradition. Stone tablets are the only known archival storage medium known to survive the test of time. :-)

Putting everything in the “cloud” is marginal proposition for long term storage. User IDs and passwords are easily forgotten or lost. Cloud companies fails or decide to get rid of the business. Digital shoe boxes as noted is pointless without context.

There is a project called the 10,000 year clock originally started Dan Hillis of Thinking Machine fame (for techies :-). 

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now>

It’s useful to read some of the background material on a lazy rainy day on how does one even build a clock intended to last 10,000 years.

Spencer

> On May 15, 2015, at 16:36, CJ andS <csaganich at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I suppose the two major headings for this issue is digital storage media
> and storage retrieval.  The past 30 years has seen much movement in these
> two areas and stability of products and services seems dodgy.  From that
> perspective the next 30 years might seem difficult to manage regarding
> storage and hardware.  However, with the advent of mass public based
> storage problem solved from the consumers perspective.  Load it into the
> cloud and retrieve it from the cloud with your cloud loading and retrieving
> device....and a credit card.  The major corporations will manage the
> particulars of technology.  So for my wife who has 10 hard drives chugging
> on her desk and 20 in the closet for back-up, perhaps it is a better
> solution for the ages.  I suppose trust in corporate management and the
> ability to afford to maintain such services becomes the new salient
> issues.  Mass corporate data storage may seem like a digital safety deposit
> box, but, who gets access and for what price?
> 
> The only truly archival methodology for transferring information about
> objects whose lifespan can be measured in geological time is oral
> tradition. The shoebox is nice, but frankly, they become meaningless
> objects without context.  It seems that most mass public data storage is
> devoid of context and falls prey to the problems of reductionism.   Unless
> there is a living human memory or near equivalent to recreate the whole
> from the pieces or to create the context from the parts the shoebox of
> negatives and the archived digital file will be nothing but an object to
> future generations.  The digital files barely an object at that!  Unlike
> that curved iron rod with the flange and handle that was once an essential
> tool on the farm but for the life of me I can't imagine what it was used
> for but I still use it to scare racoons away from the cat bowl.  I suppose
> I can throw a hard drive at the racoon but an icoud account?
>