02 September 2013

With the push towards digitization, are we more likely to "lose" memories?

Old Negatives
These are some negatives found in an old box.  Few photos of these negatives were found and yet, some of these pictures have been reprinted
Copyright 2013, Diane L Richard
With print copies of photos, we used to have to worry about putting them in photo albums (unless we just threw them in a box) and photo albums take up space. 

With the advent of digital photos, one can now publish books (many services to choose from) which take up less space or put your images up in the “cloud” to save and share.

One used to have to take one’s film to a store to get processed and then patiently wait for it to be developed and to see the photos you had taken.  I remember coming back from trips and having rolls and rolls of film (not always labeled as to which day of the trip) and then as I could afford to, getting them developed.  And, different cameras took different film.  Do you remember 126? 110?

More Old Negatives
These are some more negatives found in an old box.  Different format film and none of these had accompanying photos!
Copyright 2013, Diane L Richard
With the advent of digital photos, we now have our images instantaneously available to us.  My cell phone takes better photos than some of my earliest cameras did! Remember Polaroid photos?  Having to wait for the image to appear and then putting the special coating on each one. 

This “brief” walk down photographic memory lane was inspired by reading this piece, Print What You Want to Preserve. If you’ve ever experienced computer crashes, lost cell phones, cloud service failures or any technology failures where you have “lost” photos, you will want to read this piece.

Though, I love the cloud, and though I love my digital camera and cell phone, and I do use crashplan and an off-line backup hard drive, I still sometimes print out images and I always create photo books for each vacation or special event (e.g. graduation). 

With our move towards more and more digitization (which can be wonderful), sometimes, there is still a reason to “print” some of what you want to preserve.  Just like reading a book is still not the same as reading my kindle.  Look at a digital photo album isn’t quite the same as sharing some time on the couch with my family as we flip the pages of a photo book ...

Happy Labor Day.  May some of the day be spent with family creating new memories.  Consider taking some photos and maybe even printing a few .






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3 comments:

  1. An interesting and timely post about the cost of our headlong plunge into the digital age! I mused about this and the demise of the paper-based record format of our ancestors in an August 20th post at Filiopietism Prism The paper-based format of the lives of our forebears ruled for many centuries and where those paper-based records today, they are accessible by us today in exactly the same way they were for our ancestors (language and writing syle aside). I am not so sure this will be the case for the electrons we now use to create and store our records. This is why (to be prudent and cautious) I am taking a lesson from some of my fellow genealogy bloggers and going to the effort to also preserve my blog and its posts in the ancient, but easily accessible, paper-based format called a book. :-)

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  2. Thanks for the comment John. With my head hanging, I have to admit that your posts of the last two weeks (in very good company with about 200 posts by other bloggers) are in my queue "to read" and that I have yet to read that particular one. For those who haven't checked out John's blog here is the post he refers to, http://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2013/08/when-all-paper-is-gone-what-will-we.html!

    And, I have "now" read it John ... nice when we muse about the same genealogical topics.

    As always, thanks for sharing. DLR

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  3. Thanks for the kind words Diane! No need to hang your head, I am still trying to catch up with blog posts I missed while in the Adirondacks for two weeks almost a month ago! :-) I am a regular reader of UpFront and often find posts here that I recommend in my weekly "Saturday Serendipity" series.

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