"Alan Browne" wrote:
On 10-03-10 23:59 , Neil Gould wrote:
"Alan wrote:
On 10-03-10 16:31 , wrote:
If anything, MOST of the digital images shot today will
disappear in 10
years or less. I highly doubt very many people do any sort of
archival
That's why I said 1 in 1,000,000 surviving images. Considering
the
number of photos shot today, it will still be a deluge of
images.
One problem with this line of reasoning is that you are describing
two
pools of photo takers.
Yes to the "two pools" notion, and the "conservators" being a much
smaller group. (I don't see that as a "problem" however).
One might see it as a problem, if the fact that "conservators" will
not be in the larger pool of folks making digital images. My WAG is
that there are closer to a billion shots *a day* being taken, and due
to the many factors that lead to the loss of digital data, it is a
reasonable guess that less than 1% of those will survive for 10 years.
That's a pretty drastic difference from your notion, and from a
cultural perspective, it can be considered a problem.
By your own statement, the digital images that
survive will be managed by those that take extraordinary care of
their
data.
I'd characterize it more as "best reasonable effort." Which is
orders
of magnitude better than ordinary neglect. And then an even smaller
group making extraordinary efforts.
I don't know what you mean by "best reasonable effort", but what I'm
referring to is that for digital data to survive longer than one
generation, the interest in preserving the data has to be continued
across generations. If one considers the preservation of collections
of any type to be a guide, it is easy to see that less than
extraordinary efforts in maintaining digital data will be inadequate.
in order to keep a digital image for 500 years, I'd say that your
notion is grossly overestimated, if for no other reason than the
cost
of the effort to preserve them.
To be clear: I'm really addressing "survivors" on a statistical
basis.
And of course survival favours the prepared.
For that many generations, the statistics favor retentions closer to
zero.
The cheapest method that requires no long term plan is to use
archival
CD/DVD (BluRay?) and to store them benignly.
I suggest you do some research on "archival" digital storage media.
The writable materials will not survive for even a small fraction of
500 years.
It's just big, big, big numbers and the survival of some of the
data.
But some small part of a really big number is still a lot.
Pure fantasy.
I should mention the image agencies such as Corbis which amass
images
(film and digital) and go to great lengths to preserve those images.
No reason to mention such organizations. They are representative of
the extraordinary efforts I referred to, and even their survival is
not likely to be for 500 years.
--
best,
Neil
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