[Leica] So much for "film is forever"

[csaganich at gmail.com (CJ andS)]

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?

On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 3:03 PM, Clive Moss <Clive at moss.net> wrote:

> Not sure what a "electric memory device" is - but I have a couple of disks
> full of digital files that began life in the late 90s and and are still
> fine.
>
> Flickr and Facebook will provide the equivalent of the shoe box of old
> negatives and prints - and will show no fading.
>
> I spread my stuff over Smugmug, Flickr, and Facebook, with a smidgen of
> Geni for family archive kind of stuff. It may not all survive, but some
> will. My kids and grandkids are computer savvy enough to cope and pass them
> along to the next generations. They will not know what to do with the boxes
> of negatives, slides, and prints that I still have - unless I get around to
> digitizing them.
>
>
> --
> Clive
> http://clive.moss.net
>
>
> On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 1:26 PM, Douglas Nygren via LUG <
> lug at leica-users.org
> > wrote:
>
> > I read this past week tht digital files start to deteriorate as early as
> > within 7 days if stored in a turned off electric memory device.
> > So the new technology is not all it was cracked up to be.It may have
> > killed film, but it is destroying itself as you read this.
> > A friend who ran a film processing and printing business once said to me
> > that one consequence of the digital revolution will be that people in the
> > future won't have a shoe box filled with old negatives to go through and
> > find pictures of loved ones. Sic transit gloria mundi.
> > Doug
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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>



-- 
Chris Saganich
www.imagebrooklyn.com