Memories and data, frozen in time.
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I remember when all you could save on personal computers was what your hard drive allowed you to and what you could fit on a floppy disc.
Oh, the hard decisions - What do I keep, what do I dispose of? Do I really need this program or this file? Can I do without?
And then - wonder of wonders - came the Read/Write CD, and then the Zip Drive, and then (or maybe simultaneously) the USB Drive (or Thumb Drives or Memory Stick, or whatever one likes to call it). Suddenly, everything could be saved. Memory was nothing we paid attention to at all: Make a thing? Save it. Make ten versions? Save those too.
Until the technology moved on.
First, floppy drives moved from internal drives to external drives and then disappeared. Next was the Zip Drive (probably because it was a single use item instead of Read/Write CD/DVD drive). The CD/DVD drives became external and then disappeared.
Only the Thumb Drives remained - likely because the port was useful for other things as well.
Suddenly, memories and data were frozen in time.
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Over the years my data storage has migrated: the Zip drives were copied to CDs when the Zip Drive itself was no longer manufactured and obsolete, the CD files migrated to USB Drives when CD/DVD drives were no longer standard fare in computers.
The Zip Drives are long gone into a shred bin; the CDs are still on a shelf as I cannot bring myself (yet) to get rid of them (in the event I failed to copy something over). The USB drives now sit in my validated storage device, there if I need to find a file from years ago.
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I do not know why I am particularly nostalgic about data and data storage devices, other than as passing student of history, I am aware of how much effort has been expended up through the latter half of the 19th Century to the preservation of data.
We have lost whole slews of works from the Classical World - books that are referenced by authors but not now in existence or authors we only know from references because nothing of them survived. Knowledge used to be painstakingly copied into books or imprinted upon memories.
Now, we just through everything out to the wilds of the InterWeb and assume that it will always be there when we need it.
I admit I am a curmudgeon and Luddite, but even to me that seems like a highly risky decision.
TB, I'm sorta in love with the Validated Storage Device.
ReplyDeleteIt is an excellent piece. A coworker, who knows I like rabbits (everyone at work knows I like rabbits) gifted it to me.
DeleteOn one hand, I'm staggered you recall Zip Drives. On the other, you are a student of history, and those devices are even more obscure than floppy disks what still fit such a descriptor.
ReplyDeleteI recall a time ages ago, where nameless peers on image boards would confidently proclaim "The Internet Never Forgets". Then, it was certainly true. In the years since, the Internet appears to have suffered a frightening amount of head trauma, become addicted to narcotics, and is likely developing a curious case of Alzheimer's.
Bit Rot is quite real, even (or perhaps especially) in the Digital Commons; how often have I returned to a single website of yore, only to find so many things vanished into the mists. Whole swathes of videos, lost for their choice of host foundering in the wake of the Tube of You; others hosted there in such halcyon days now naught but echoes of shuttered accounts. See-Beams glittering at the Tannhauser Gate, one might even say.
At least we'll have the graffiti from Pompeii for a while yet.
P_P - Oh, I remember them. Compared to floppy storage space, they were marvels
DeleteInteresting musings on "The Internet Never Forgets" Your point is well taken: videos disappear off The Tube Of You with regular frequency, links run to websites that only provide a "404" notice. Maybe it all exists somewhere still, but nowhere that anyone will ever see it, except the occasional AI passing through, scanning it for scraping, and then moving on.
The Ravishing Mrs. TB and Nighean Dhonn were in Pompeii earlier this month. The graffiti reads as clearly as ever.
In the mid 1990s the librarian at my then place of work was getting seriously worried about archiving information and still keeping it accessible. We had heard stories of data from early NASA satellite missions stored on magnetic tape in vaults, but no longer accessible because the systems had been superceded, and she had similar concerns about her R&D files. Her stop-gap solution was to microfilm everything, on the basis that that would need nothing more than a powerful lens.
ReplyDeleteHow she has coped since then with the multifarious options available now I have no idea. Personally, I still prefer to use CDROM, at least with an external USB drive I can still read everything. And I prefer to get hard copy media in preference to cloud access, that way I have a fighting chance of keeping access without big brother cutting me off...
Will - In my industry (biopharmaceutical/medical devices), that is a real thing as well. The regulations require that you maintain things in "human readable format". With updates and proprietary software, maintaining accessibility to the data is a real thought exercise. In some cases, older systems are kept purely because of the data.
DeleteI am hard copy media guy as well. Yes, there are risks to rot and decay, but a helpful large corporation or government cannot just eliminate my access without me knowing...
AND before all the electronics, I put together carusels of 35mm color slides, starting 40 years ago, the history of my children's activity. I don't know where they are anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnon - I have four sets of carousels with my foreign trips in the late 80's/early 90's. And I inherited my parents' slides from when we traveled overseas as a family. I saved the slide machine as well, so at least we can see them.
DeleteI recently received physical photos from my great-grandparents. If they had been on data storage devices, I wonder if they'd still exist. I received all my dad's old slides as well, along with his slide projector, screen, and old analog 35mm cameras. I appreciate not having to pay to develop film, but on the other hand, I find I've lost much digital data over the years for various reasons. 200 years from now when my great grand-children have a look, I wonder if any of that digital data I save will be accessible to them.
ReplyDeleteLeigh, we boxed up a fair amount of photos that my mother had inherited from the previous generation that - like you - I wonder would be accessible 100 years from now if they were made tomorrow.
DeleteIt is not even losing data - just misplacing it turns out to be a headache for me. I am relatively organized, but have to rely on clearly defining my file structure or else things go somewhere and I am trying to "find" the word combination I stored them under.