Sharpfinger
Slightly Addicted
- Messages
- 438
- Points
- 750
With ref to the recent Time Capsule Contents post and my own realisation during genealogy research/compilaTimon:
‘The Establishment’; ‘The Well-to-do’ and ‘famous people‘ can most often show you what their ancestors looked like going back many generations, perhaps several hundred years, because-
a) painted portraits exist;
b) early in the advent of photography portrait images were commissioned.
The only chance the rest of us will have, with some exceptions, (and only going back about 100 years at best) is if a relative incidentally appears in a (photographic) image covering some other main subject - AND there is provenance that they are your relative!
It was during compilation of my own ‘time capsule’ - a digital family archive consisting of a family tree/history, in a self running presentation format with links to digital images of documents; photographs; audio and video recordings that the issue of - how long will a digital archive even last and even if it has substantial longevity, will the means to access it still be available?
Those concerns have already become a reality (for me) with regards to information/images previously stored on floppy discs!
and CDs going back only as far as 20 years! -
Modern computers not connecting external floppy disc and CD drives, when I eventually tracked them down! and their software not being recognised! (even when I still have the original installation discs
).
Floppy, CD and external hard and flash drive stored-info having deteriorated within the media itself! (Despite us having been told they were (indestructible!).
And it hasn’t been a case of poor storage and/or cheap media/equipment- a lot of it was top quality gear.
To put the case further - I have a photograph of my grandparents which is approaching 100 years old. It’s a physical entity. I can hold it in front of me. I can see what they looked like.
Will my (distant) descendants be able to do the same with the digital images of me and my recent family presently stored on what is supposed to be the canine’s kahunnas of external hard drives? (Well it was when I bought it 10 years ago!
).
I doubt it very much.
Time to find an artist and dig out the Nikon FM?
‘The Establishment’; ‘The Well-to-do’ and ‘famous people‘ can most often show you what their ancestors looked like going back many generations, perhaps several hundred years, because-
a) painted portraits exist;
b) early in the advent of photography portrait images were commissioned.
The only chance the rest of us will have, with some exceptions, (and only going back about 100 years at best) is if a relative incidentally appears in a (photographic) image covering some other main subject - AND there is provenance that they are your relative!
It was during compilation of my own ‘time capsule’ - a digital family archive consisting of a family tree/history, in a self running presentation format with links to digital images of documents; photographs; audio and video recordings that the issue of - how long will a digital archive even last and even if it has substantial longevity, will the means to access it still be available?
Those concerns have already become a reality (for me) with regards to information/images previously stored on floppy discs!
and CDs going back only as far as 20 years! -Modern computers not connecting external floppy disc and CD drives, when I eventually tracked them down! and their software not being recognised! (even when I still have the original installation discs
).Floppy, CD and external hard and flash drive stored-info having deteriorated within the media itself! (Despite us having been told they were (indestructible!
).And it hasn’t been a case of poor storage and/or cheap media/equipment- a lot of it was top quality gear.
To put the case further - I have a photograph of my grandparents which is approaching 100 years old. It’s a physical entity. I can hold it in front of me. I can see what they looked like.
Will my (distant) descendants be able to do the same with the digital images of me and my recent family presently stored on what is supposed to be the canine’s kahunnas of external hard drives? (Well it was when I bought it 10 years ago!
).I doubt it very much.
Time to find an artist and dig out the Nikon FM?