an elderly couple living in a small Ontario town. Photo taken around the late 1940s or early 1950s
Toronto. We have it soft today. Sources of photos, cameras, film, darkroom, etc. abound – like our auction this month. Today, film has largely been replaced by digital technology and the ubiquitous smartphone camera.
Digital images give ‘instant gratification’. Little or no extra effort. No delay. Full color. Poor shot? Snap it again. Digital formats make annotating and searching so much better, but a terrible future cost.
Picture a researcher, professional or amateur, in the future. Few paper brochures or photos exist. Lots of material and images were produced ‘way back then’ but digital media and files are not physically touchable; viewable with human eyes. Now what?
Lots can go wrong over time: file formats may change, technology can disappear, images become unrecoverable. Old fashioned hard drives and SSDs found in junk shops or antique markets are long dead (current estimates are for a useable life of less than a decade). The images, if any remain, are millions of ones and zeros.
A recent article by Sid Butler on How-to Geek called, “What’s the Best Way to Store Data for Decades or Centuries? isn’t all that helpful – nor could it be since few if any of us can predict future devices, file formats, or ways to extract what was thought to be long dead information. Even formats and devices a few decades in the future are a mystery – who saw the disappearance of ‘floppy’ discs, or the fading of hard drives, or CDs, or DVDs.
Who could foresee the advancements in resolution? When this site began in 1996, I struggled to keep file size small. 60k was massive. Now such files are considered very small, lacking in resolution.
Think back ten centuries – around 1200 AD (I’m showing my age using outmoded terms like anno domini). What exists from back then today? How is it found? Well, it takes considerable education: archeologists do their ‘digs’ and use various means to ‘date’ any finds. Truly rare finds appear in museums and books.
Now go back just a few centuries. Suddenly things become much brighter. Many, many records exist. Those of us of English or UK background are fortunate since both England and English speaking countries have collected a wealth of these records and they are generally accessible as are books and magazines. Photography started in 1839 and with periodic improvements, it has given us a cornucopia of historic information.
Remember, the further back in time we search, the less there is to find and the greater the education needed to interpret where to look and what is found. Things seem easy to find today, especially photographs and mechanical devices like film cameras. But what about the future? Will there be a massive period in future history (new Dark Ages?) with hard to find photos and gadgets? Who knows?
