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Re: [OM] Digital storage (was Digital vs. film)

Subject: Re: [OM] Digital storage (was Digital vs. film)
From: Morgan Sparks <msparks@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 01:04:42 -0400
On the other hand, if the
> data is kept on a medium that does not obsolete in a few years, then
> you don't have to keep copying it. . .

True enough, but the CD format has been around for 15 years, and the
market is giving us new and myriad uses for it, and compatible sibling
formats.  I'll make a prediction: If our future is digital, it's going
to be pretty easy to read any digital file common to the period being
studied.  A number of "orphan" formats have been cited in this thread .
. . . that stuff is at risk.  Floppies, punch cards and tape drives are
lousy long term archival media.   

> The carvings of ancient Egypt can still be read today, the same with 
>the menuscripts of the middle ages, and the printed books of the previous
> centuries.  The pictures taken 75-100 years ago can still be seen,
> and the photographs taken 50 years ago can still be reprinted from the
> negatives -- all this without copying every few years.

Yes, the examples that remain.  But alot of it is gone forever.  You can
come up with all kinds of scenarios for losing chunks of digital
history, but the real erosion is all around us in analog: Floods,
sunlight, moisture, acid rain, acid paper, wars, earthquakes, fungus,
insects, thieves, rodents, my
mother-who-threw-out-Grandpa's-negatives-but-would-never-throw-out-a-CD,
the principled artist who burns his negatives, or the disturbed
museum-goer with a razor blade.  The real history being lost is in the
collapsing frescoes, the moldy master tapes, the disintegrating
manuscripts and crumbling reels of film.  This is not hypothetical, and
it is against this ongoing destruction that the optical disk, although
not perfect, holds some promise.

 
  And if we limit the
> discussion to digital pictures, don't forget that the picture started
> out as a digital approximation of an analog image, captured via an
> digitizing device.  So an EXACT copy of an approximation is still an
> approximation.

I agree.  Digital conversion is great with numbers and text, very good
with audio, but right now there's no way to digitize the experience of a
good projected slide on a good screen.  I was a little depressed
yesterday when I saw a full-page spread (In the NYT or WSJ) on the
latest Olympus goodies.....every one digital.

Morgan Sparks

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