Digital downside.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe
• Position: WORDS IMAGES

IF YOU WANT TO SEE AN ORIGINAL copy of the Declaration of Independence or The Constitution of the United States, you can find it in the National Archives. If you want an original manuscript by composer Ludwig van Beethoven, you can own one--if you have $2,000,000 to spend. You can go to see paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn and Pablo Picasso at most art museums. Odd collections of handwritten manuscripts exist from ancient days, giving us glimpses into other times and cultures.

In the 21 st century, however, our collective and personal histories could be lost forever in a maze of obsolete bits and bytes on the digital landscape. An article in Popular Mechanics wondered, "As technologies change, we may find our files frozen in forgotten formats. Will an entire era of human history be lost?" The article goes on to report that "the threat of lost or corrupted data faces anyone who relies on digital media to store documents ... Digital information is so simple to create and store, we naturally think it will be easily and accurately preserved for the future. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, our digital information, everything from photos of loved ones to diagrams of Navy ships, is at risk of degrading, becoming unreadable, or disappearing altogether."

Now, that is a frightening scenario to anyone who cares about the past and preserving pieces of it. While it is true that you can transfer all of your digital material to the newest formats as they appear, this not only is time-consuming, but expensive. Anyone who has lost an e-mail for no apparent reason, or had a computer hard-drive die, taking with it carefully stored photos and memorabilia, knows the risks involved in digital storage and retrieval. Poof--it is gone. No explanation; no warning.

Most of the world now uses digital cameras. Millions of people know the joy of shooting photo after photo without any processing costs and e-mailing the best of the pictures to friends and family. Few worry about preservation. They download their cameras to their computers and move on to the next event. If their computer dies, all is lost--except for the rare prints made to send to a great-aunt who would not know a computer from a toaster. Sophisticated users buy an external hard-drive to store their photographs and vital documents, and the more paranoid buy two in case one of them falls. Some send important pictures and documents to friends, or store the material on a variety of...