It happened this morning. My hard drive crashed. Luckily, I was (almost) entirely backed up, so I didn't lose much. None of my writing is gone, either because I backed it up or because I have emailed it. But I did lose some stuff: pictures taken since my last backup (a couple months ago). A couple folders of "little" stuff. Some silly downloads. Nothing worth crying over. But it got me thinking...
My mother is currently scanning pictures from 70 years ago. Longer. Pictures of my grandparents before my mother was born. Pictures of my grandmother as a young woman. She is able to scan them because we have them. Tangible, hard copies. Almost every picture I have taken in 2013 is gone. Pictures taken in 1949 still exist. How much other stuff are we going to lose access to as technology moves forward?
Don't get me wrong; I embrace new tech. I really do. But maybe we don't have to throw out the old tech, just because something new comes along, either. I live in a world of "both" and that makes me very happy.
I like photographs. And yes, I like being able to click through on my camera and show off a digital image and being able to upload them easily. You know me...both.
Those are grateful she didn't lose more than she did Pobble Thoughts. That and a buck fifty will get you coffee.
7 comments:
Glad you didn't loose more. I work for a company that's in the digital imaging world and what's become apparent to us is that we don't know the true value of life/lifecycle of a digital photo yet. We've got people clamoring to delete photos after a couple of years because of the cost of storage. But we've also got people wondering if the photo doesn't become... wanted again? valuable again? later in it's life and a) we just don't have enough historical data to trend and b) we haven't figured out how to re-use/re-sell the photo later.
So and So ~ Me too! And you get the point completely. Boxes of pictures seem unwieldly ~ until you lose the digital images.
Yeah, and that's on a business level. On the personal level when it's your own stuff? Yargh.
So and So ~ Yargh, indeed. (ooo! I like "yargh." I may borrow "yargh.")
Yargh gets me through lots...
I've wondered that also. I've had a camera on me since I was 18 years old. I'm good at purging the lousy ones, and the near-duplicates so that my paper photos are relatively pared down to 2 (or 3) shoe boxes full.
Still, there is a life-gap between paper and digital. A year or two where I didn't back up to CD, or the laptop became obsolete.
So. I pay for a service that backs up my photos in 4 states. I have a digital hard drive. And I recently bought a scanner, to get the paper backed up, along with 10 albums full of my parents and grandparents.
And I will keep them, of course, in both formats.
Lori ~ My favorite pictures are backed up, and several are actually printed and in frames. I know; I'm so old school. :)
Post a Comment