The World 50 Years Ago

Cool pics.

It did make me think though - how easy is it going to be to access todays photos in 60 years time? There's something to be said for analogue.
 
OrbitalDawn said:
How do you mean? Why won't digital photos be accessible in 60 years time?
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More to do with the medium they're stored on. If you uncovered a 5 1/4 inch floppy today would you be able to access it? How about a Zip drive?
 
TJ99 said:
They will. But buried under bajillions of gigabytes of useless junk, food pictures, selfies and hashtags.
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Yeah... :|

bwana said:
More to do with the medium they're stored on. If you uncovered a 5 1/4 inch floppy today would you be able to access it? How about a Zip drive?
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Hmm, well digital is more than that. If it's on the internet it won't go away, ever. :p

There's nothing stopping people from changing mediums as they advance. People stopped using zip drives and floppies and moved the data on newer mediums.
 
bwana said:
Cool pics.

It did make me think though - how easy is it going to be to access todays photos in 60 years time? There's something to be said for analogue.
Click to expand...

Read somewhere some time ago that we are gonna have 'lost history' issues somewhere down the line due to digital media.
 
OrbitalDawn said:
There's nothing stopping people from changing mediums as they advance. People stopped using zip drives and floppies and moved the data on newer mediums.
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But that's his point. As we move to newer mediums the stuff on older mediums get lost.
 
ponder said:
Read somewhere some time ago that we are gonna have 'lost history' issues somewhere down the line due to digital media.
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I have a box with old love letters I used to send when I was younger. Now everything on whatsapp gets lost.
 
50 years...
Its quite scary - there was a story a while ago about a former US Marine who went back to Vietnam to track down the infant son he had to leave behind during the fall of Saigon. The son is 49 and has grandchildren. :wtf:
 
Chevron said:
But that's his point. As we move to newer mediums the stuff on older mediums get lost.
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But it's not like that has to happen, surely?

Just transfer stuff to the new medium.

But I get your point re love letters. Interesting change in the way we approach sentimentality (or not).

Keeping an e-mail ain't got the same touch...
 
Archives are storing images in tif format rather than jpg due to the concerns about the long term issues with the latter format. In other words there is doubt that a jpg viewer in 50 years time will be able to open current files.

There is also a Wikipedia page on this stuff. Looks like it gets complicated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation
 
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