"Alan Browne" wrote:
On 10-03-12 10:38 , Neil Gould wrote:
much snipped: follow the thread
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.

I see it very differently. First of all, 200 years ago we had so
little
in terms of images of people of that time, that our notions of their
lives are based on writing, sketches, painting, sculptures and so
on.
The lack of photographic information on these people has not
prevented a
rich interpretation of their lives.

A lot has happened in the last 200 years, much of it important to
document in as many ways as possible. Those in photography often
understand the old saying about the worth of a picture in terms of
words, and so it goes.

Now we have a deluge of images.

1% per 10 yr. survival. Reasonable. But that's of people who don't
care for their images.

No, IMO that's overall, and non-linear, since that figure includes
media that won't make it 20 years, and so on.

In that 1% is an even smaller number who take very good care of
their
image data and a portion of those who ask themselves, "how do I make
these REALLY last a long time."

And out of that last bunch is the statistical likelihood of some
images
surviving.

That's all. No guarantee at all that a _specific_ image will
survive.

But the probability can always be improved.

Not without extraordinary effort.

I think we're at odds over the following:

You (and perhaps stephe) are looking at it from the POV of given,
specific images surviving for a long time.

I'm looking at it from the POV that some images, though I can't say
which, will survive by chance.

Yes, we are at odds over the idea that any digital images will survive
*by chance* for that length of time. I've seen nor experienced
anythiing that supports the idea that this will be the case. If you
have some information to the contrary, perhaps you should present it
at this point.

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.

Not so. The archival CD/DVD media (usually gold based) have 100
year to
200 year lives when stored in benign conditions. This is predicted
based on accelerated life cycle tests of such media v. the common
CD/DVD's which use silver or aluminum and which suffer oxidization
over
the long term - even in well sealed media.

Without going into the failures of such tests to predict longevity of
materials (I heard many claims since purchasing my first CD recorder
before 1990, and have experienced many failurs of "archival" media
since that time), it appears that your above commentary is conflating
replicated media with writable media. Replication and the preservation
of replicated materials would be included in my idea of "extraordinary
effort", and would not include any of the typical every-day images nor
most of the professionally taken still images.

--
best,

Neil



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