Memory Sticks - 08 June 2011

In this great age of digitizing everything, many people buy digital cameras or opt for video cameras and store vast numbers of pictures on their laptops and other devices like memory sticks. They are very easy to transfer between places and share with friends on Facebook. Over the next 6 or 12 months the betting is lots of good pics will be shared and many others will be deleted.

In the long run though, what happens as technology is upgraded and pictures which are stored on one device cannot be transferred because they are the wrong format. There are ways to get around this but in the long term we can be certain that technology will look very different from what it is now. How will be move our pictures and memories around and how can we be certain they are ever in the right format? The probable outcome is that lots of kids will grow up without pictures of their youth because devices and formats have become defunct.

This isnt very different from history I hear you say; silver plate images, old Kodak transparencies, video cassettes, CD's etc etc.

It is the pace of change at which technologies are updated which is different. Apple and Microsoft have intense product cycles where new products must come to market every few months to keep up revenues and pacify shareholders. If one of these names disappears in a decade there will be another. The point is that our household budgets cannot keep pace with the development of products and bit by bit we will lose pictures as we skip a product range or foget to transfer and reformat.

In fifty years from now, there will be a big gap where history is not as complete as it should be not just at the national level but for us all individually. There is a lot to be said for running in a parallel universe with a good old standard 36mil and paying that extra bit to have memories stored in a photograph album safely tucked away on a bookshelf where they do not need reformatting for decades!