We all have that special box, drawer, file or whatever where we store our important papers. The more judicious among us keep a safety deposit box at the bank. It is a good thing to have, storing all those important documents, not necessarily cash, coins or collectibles. I have a fire proof box that I use for that purpose. Nothing in there of any monetary value, just insurance papers, birth certificates and the like. As a kid I thought those safety deposit boxes where only for the wealthy. They were rather mysterious. I wondered what secrets they held. Just no telling. The importance of keeping the original documents has done nothing but increase over the years. Soon you had best be keeping your medical documents in there as well, a record of your vaccinations and the like. I can see our freedom to " move about " being limited in the future based on that data. You are being tracked today, even if you don't believe it, you are. They call it contact tracing, claiming it has been around for years. Yes, I have no doubt that it has been used in the past, it's just today the technology exists to track millions of us at a time. Personally it doesn't concern me as I have nothing to hide from anyone. Follow me around all you want.
I remember in the movies, when I was a kid, spies would have microfilm to store all that information on. Heck I used microfilm when I was in the Navy, we had thousands of pages of microfilm. We called it microfiche but it was microfilm. It couldn't be read without magnification. It was like a viewmaster on steroids. Today a thumb drive will hold those same pages. I was impressed with cd's and dvd's when I first saw them. It was an amazing thing, all that information. We didn't start calling it data until we started using home computers. Then we all started getting all techy throwing terms like data, bites, and drives around. We talk about virtual reality, Bluetooth, and the like. We have data plans! Some will give us unlimited data. Yes, we can have it all. But we do have to have the technology to decode that data. At least with microfilm you could just use a magnifying glass if that was all you had. On the plus side we can encrypt, there's a spy word for you, our data quite easily today. I've put passwords on some of my data, which I promptly forgot, and that data is secure, even from me. I'm not that tech savvy and often encounter problems with that sort of thing. I get flustered when I want to download something from the internet and get this message. there is no program associated with this, do you want to create an association? Uh, no. I don't want to join an association, I just want to save this article. Or it says, Microsoft can't open this document, look for a program on the internet. You are the internet why can't you find it yourself? Well, that's operator error, I realize that, but it is frustrating at times. I now have pictures and data on a medium I can not read. Yup, I've got floppy discs. I also have those discs, the name escapes me at the moment, but you know the ones in the little plastic cases, what are they three or four inch discs? Whatever the case, I don't presently have a means to read those discs. Yes I know I can buy an external drive to do that with. Question is, will my grandkids be able to purchase that drive and will they know what they are? They will be like old phonographs, available as collectors items. I can see that now, and these kids are called floppy discs, your great grandfather used these. Wow, that is all the data it can hold? Of course I remember 45 RPM records, most of them were between three and five minutes long. What more data? Buy a LP ( long play ) album. Prior to that we did use magnetic tape and it would run for hours, just not very convenient or portable. Yes I still have 8 track and cassette tapes. Can't play either one.
With all of this technology to preserve our data, including photographs, wait I mean digital images, I'm beginning to fear how secure it all will really be. By secure , I mean how easily will future generations to be to access all of that? I'm thinking it is liable to be too secure, so secure you can't even read or see it at all! Yes, there will always be a means to do so, I understand that. What I'm thinking about is the ease in doing so. I can take out that old photograph of my great grandfather, a picture taken in the late 1800's and look at it. No equipment necessary, well except for my own vision which is getting a little blurry and dim, a hardware issue. I also have pictures on those discs I mentioned earlier that I can't look at right now. Oh I could a few years back, not today. My thought is if the grandchildren or others should discover these discs after my passing would they then seek out the equipment, the technology, to access them? Will they even know what the heck they are? Well maybe, maybe not.
Well I have a box, a chest really where I keep my photographs and some memorabilia that I call the archives. It's a wooden chest so vulnerable to fire, water, and handling damages. The thing is, everything in there is immediately visible. You can see it, hold it, examine it. I do that on occasion and find it satisfying. That's true even though I have done that numerous times with the same stuff. All the stuff that is important to me is in there, except for what I have around the house on display. I did begin writing a catalogue of those items, a brief explanation of what they are and why I kept them. It's my feeling by doing so I will ensure their salvation. Less likely to be discarded if you know the story behind those objects. That's the security system I have devised for those things. Of course there is a degree of encryption involved, I'm writing that catalogue in cursive! A little mystery is always a good thing, something to spark the interest. Is it a secret code of some type? I'm not sure, I think my grandparents talked about something like this, everyone used to do it. Let's scan it, upload it and see what comes back.
I remember in the movies, when I was a kid, spies would have microfilm to store all that information on. Heck I used microfilm when I was in the Navy, we had thousands of pages of microfilm. We called it microfiche but it was microfilm. It couldn't be read without magnification. It was like a viewmaster on steroids. Today a thumb drive will hold those same pages. I was impressed with cd's and dvd's when I first saw them. It was an amazing thing, all that information. We didn't start calling it data until we started using home computers. Then we all started getting all techy throwing terms like data, bites, and drives around. We talk about virtual reality, Bluetooth, and the like. We have data plans! Some will give us unlimited data. Yes, we can have it all. But we do have to have the technology to decode that data. At least with microfilm you could just use a magnifying glass if that was all you had. On the plus side we can encrypt, there's a spy word for you, our data quite easily today. I've put passwords on some of my data, which I promptly forgot, and that data is secure, even from me. I'm not that tech savvy and often encounter problems with that sort of thing. I get flustered when I want to download something from the internet and get this message. there is no program associated with this, do you want to create an association? Uh, no. I don't want to join an association, I just want to save this article. Or it says, Microsoft can't open this document, look for a program on the internet. You are the internet why can't you find it yourself? Well, that's operator error, I realize that, but it is frustrating at times. I now have pictures and data on a medium I can not read. Yup, I've got floppy discs. I also have those discs, the name escapes me at the moment, but you know the ones in the little plastic cases, what are they three or four inch discs? Whatever the case, I don't presently have a means to read those discs. Yes I know I can buy an external drive to do that with. Question is, will my grandkids be able to purchase that drive and will they know what they are? They will be like old phonographs, available as collectors items. I can see that now, and these kids are called floppy discs, your great grandfather used these. Wow, that is all the data it can hold? Of course I remember 45 RPM records, most of them were between three and five minutes long. What more data? Buy a LP ( long play ) album. Prior to that we did use magnetic tape and it would run for hours, just not very convenient or portable. Yes I still have 8 track and cassette tapes. Can't play either one.
With all of this technology to preserve our data, including photographs, wait I mean digital images, I'm beginning to fear how secure it all will really be. By secure , I mean how easily will future generations to be to access all of that? I'm thinking it is liable to be too secure, so secure you can't even read or see it at all! Yes, there will always be a means to do so, I understand that. What I'm thinking about is the ease in doing so. I can take out that old photograph of my great grandfather, a picture taken in the late 1800's and look at it. No equipment necessary, well except for my own vision which is getting a little blurry and dim, a hardware issue. I also have pictures on those discs I mentioned earlier that I can't look at right now. Oh I could a few years back, not today. My thought is if the grandchildren or others should discover these discs after my passing would they then seek out the equipment, the technology, to access them? Will they even know what the heck they are? Well maybe, maybe not.
Well I have a box, a chest really where I keep my photographs and some memorabilia that I call the archives. It's a wooden chest so vulnerable to fire, water, and handling damages. The thing is, everything in there is immediately visible. You can see it, hold it, examine it. I do that on occasion and find it satisfying. That's true even though I have done that numerous times with the same stuff. All the stuff that is important to me is in there, except for what I have around the house on display. I did begin writing a catalogue of those items, a brief explanation of what they are and why I kept them. It's my feeling by doing so I will ensure their salvation. Less likely to be discarded if you know the story behind those objects. That's the security system I have devised for those things. Of course there is a degree of encryption involved, I'm writing that catalogue in cursive! A little mystery is always a good thing, something to spark the interest. Is it a secret code of some type? I'm not sure, I think my grandparents talked about something like this, everyone used to do it. Let's scan it, upload it and see what comes back.
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