I’ve always had a love for photography. It’s the only form of visual art that I have any sort of skill in and I was quite excited to begin working for a Micrographics lab about five years ago. While it’s not the traditional point and shoot photography most people are familiar with, my job entails taking all manner of documents old and…well…not as old and putting them onto microfilm; in turn, preserving these important pieces of paper for many years to come. These documents range from newspapers of the 1800’s to confidential medical records. You know in movies and television when they go to a library and look up old newspaper articles? That’s microfilm. You know, I’d be willing to bet many of you never even think that this sort of thing happens to documents like this anymore, though. It’s one of those jobs that is incredibly important but happens behind the scenes, preserving your history while you sleep.
…That’s an awesome tagline…we should use that…
For the past few months, however, I’ve been working more in the digital side of things. Taking the images on film and turning them into digital image files. This troubles me because, being the techie I am, I know all too well how fragile digital technology can be. The term “digital migration” comes to mind; having to update your software and migrate all your information to a new device every few years to ensure it’s always compatible. This has to happen with digital images as well with the exception that this isn’t your profile picture folder for Facebook; this is history. Documents from the civil war, papers with signatures from presidents and historical figures and all other sorts of important historical documents all of them susceptible to viruses, wrong keystrokes, computer crashes and even hackers. Does that scare you? Knowing your past and your history can be deleted in the blink of an eye?
Now I love tech as much as the next nerd but when it comes to this big push for digitization of everything, I can’t say I’m a fan. Sure, I know things can be backed up and nothing is ever really and truly gone, but your regular run of the mill computer user won’t know how to recover something that’s been lost to the aether. Hell, even a good IT guy couldn’t get it back without a lot of work, if at all. My point is, that digital technology is fragile. So far, I've only talked about our collective history but what about our personal history? That cute little pink point and shoot digital camera Barbie is using to document her “Like, totally sweet bachelorette party with my besties.” could delete all 300 pictures when she accidentally presses a wrong button while she’s drunk. That wedding photographer’s awesome digital SLR shatters into pieces when it’s knocked out of his hand during a group dance at the reception; he loses all the pictures on that SD card instead of just the 30 or so on the current roll. You see my point? These are all pieces of memories and they are all easily lost.
Everyone wants to jump to the next best thing, “Bigger and better, simpler and easier, faster and quicker that’s the best way!”. What they don’t think of is how long a piece of film will last compared to a digital file. When it comes to physical film it can be guaranteed for hundreds of years but how long is a digital file guaranteed for? I don’t think anyone knows. So when you’re out purchasing a camera and you have a choice between film and digital, think about preservation because “Digital Preservation” is an oxymoron.
Permanent: (adj) 1: Lasting or intended to last indefinitely without change.
Virtual (adj) 1: Being such in practicality or effect, but not in actual fact or name.
Till next time, you permanent kids.
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