Hooch Tan
12-28-2011, 11:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/were-losing-our-past-to-technology/article2281503/' target='_blank'>http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...article2281503/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"The films contained clips of my family in the late 1950s and early 1960s, not long before my mother became gravely ill. Over the intervening decades, I hadn’t had the heart to look at them. But, this time, I packed the films into a shoebox and took them to someone who specializes in converting old films into digital form. Within a week, I had all the clips on a DVD and was showing them to my wife and two young children."</em></p><p>The problem with technology is infrastructure. Most technology needs an infrastructure of one fashion or another, and without that infrastructure, the data we store using that technology can be lost. We have seen turnover in technology several times over the past few decades. From vinyls to cassette tapes to CDs to mp3s and beyond, music and audio recordings have changed several times. Videos have gone through similar transitions as have pictures and documents; everything we use to capture the precious thoughts and memories of our lives. There is nothing wrong with using technology to store these keepsakes, but time and effort must be spent to maintain your treasures, and I think that it is worth it.</p>