The next step is to make a commitment: that you will revisit your recordings every 10 years. If your digital files are to reach your great-grandchildren, somebody, or generations of somebodies, will have to copy them from one hard drive to the next and from there onto solid-state drives, then to nanotubes, then to brain implants—whatever the latest storage medium happens to be. And it’s not just the storage medium that will change; the file formats will have to be migrated, too. AVCHD probably won’t be the state of the art in video recording in 2021, but there will certainly be software that can convert it to whatever is.
That way some of our photos, videos and documents will reach the audiences of 2161. Maybe only a tiny percentage—but enough to make your descendants grateful that you made that once-a-decade effort.
This article was originally published with the title Seeing Forever.
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8 Comments
Add CommentI respect David Pogue as a generalist and trend-watcher, and enjoy the heck out of his writing style. But predicting that files using today's image and video formats will become unreadable? Gimme a break!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome might fade from daily use, but it's not like the world is going to forget how to open the billions (trillions?) of files that have been created since the advent of digital cameras and video recorders.
And David's contention that no format has survived even fifty years is bogus on a couple of levels. First, commercial computers have barely been around that long, so of course there are few formats that date back that far. Second, Google helped me find a service that reads 80-column punch cards -- a format that was invented in 1928! And there are emulators that allow programs written for the IBM 360 (introduced in 1964, 47 years ago) on modern computers.
In short, I think David's file format concerns are way overblown. Deterioration of physical media, on the other hand, is a legit issue.
I think conversion software will eliminate much of this problem. Digital pics are just info, and as long as that info can be read it can reconstituted. Still, it is good to make "hard copies" of your most important stuff.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have to agree with g200boy. Most tools allow up-conversion from older formats and although early video may be difficult, images and audio I expect to be very easy to work with and move through the years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat being said, this is an interesting discussion and I don't think much thought has been put into this and I definitely agree with David that maintenance of these images/videos to keep them around will be more work than it was. No more tossing it in a box and your great grandchildren finding it when cleaning out the garage. No more "garage sale hunting" and finding a box of old pictures that someone had laying around. Even if that happened, the media likely wouldn't be viable. Not because it had become outdated, but because all of the media we currently have has a relatively short (in relation to a tintype photo or painting) lifespan. Get us into some crystal-based storage and then we can look at sharing across the millenia if we are still around.
I think another more painful issue will simply be picture/video overload and categorization/cleanup. You don't take one good photo of the kids now, you take 50 photos and hope you get a good one thinking you will go back and clean up and you never have the time to do so. I took 10 photos of my cute as a button baby chihuahua the other day just before leaving for work. Had that been with a "real" camera that I had to pay to develop the pictures for I at most would have taken a single photo. I currently have no less than 1200 or so images on my iPhone 4 that have been taken since upgrading to it two months ago. When I used film based cameras it would take me months to fill a roll of film and even then I would usually end up taking it in before the roll was finished.
joe
I guess that makes it 4/4 that think file formats going obsolete is a pretty unlikely scenario. The author might look at Irfanview, it has support for an incredible number of file formats. Including Electronic Arts IFF ILBM from the eighties, Windows 3.x style icon, and FAX format.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think on the other hand storage medium death is definitely a valid concern.
When you think about it though, a simple backup system fixes that. If you are backing up your system regularly, your media should last indefinitely.
And really I think every computer owner should be taught the importance of a good backup system.
This article reminded me how I've lost digital files because the media deteriorated (old floppies) or the conversion to a newer file format didn't happen (didn't realise WordStar was not forever, alas). So, yes, Pogue, you are so right. We need to transfer to newer media, to make sure the formats are upgraded from time to time, and that we don't use lossier formats than we started with. Otherwise, poof.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow long have we tracked solar flares? The 9.0 in Japan was unexpected as well. EMF and future weapons could settle this in a flash. Or maybe protection technology catchs up with destructive variables just in time. But we may need the time-bending DeLorean and a bananna to see what home remedy Gramma had for radiation exposure, worm hole lag and who's letter jacket is this?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the EmFAHsis is on the wrong sillAHble. True, Microsoft has been one of the worst offenders in file format compatibility. Just look at how their Back Up file format has changed from Windows 3.0 on from one incompatible format to the next. But that is not the real threat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFortunately this is a subject on which I am somewhat an authority. The real threat is well known. It is the obsoleting of the physical media. How many of you can read an 8" floppy disk? How about 5-1/2"? Same for the 1/2" 7 track reel tapes, punched paper tape, punched cards and on and on. I even have tons of 1/4" 1-7/8 ips Sony audio tapes which have long outlived any device which is capable of reading them.
How much longer are the CD drives going to be around? This will be the next big threat. Sony is both aware of the problem and causing it! One of the biggest problems and most under appreciated function is transferring archives from old media to new media.
On the preservation of "digitised" images (Australian spelling variant), one cannot forget the most current effective form being archival optical media (good for storage the same time as traditional B&W wet processes). When stored in appropriate environmental conditions, this method far surpasses the MTBF (mean time before failure) which traditional magnetic and solid-state disks suffer, among other variables. The problem is, as David mentions, we are certainly not confident in the optical drive living for 150 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn "infinite duplication without loss of quality," if one repeatedly saves an already-compressed image, vhs tape, cassette, or the common .mp3 track, generation loss will occur. Duplicating a CD will not result in an exact copy (verifiable if you listen very carefully).
Finally, using the term "digitised photos" or "binary pictorial representation" to describe images when viewed on a monitor is more suitable than using the term "digital" where the Latin word digitalis refers to toes or fingers. This term is continually butchered (again, among many others).