OT, Cleaning Out The Attic

[Uncle Monster]

A lot of families are cleaning out the homes of relatives who passed away a nd finding pictures, negatives, slides, reels of movie film and magnetic me dia. I came across a site in my Spam folder of a company that has the equip ment to turn all those old formats into digital format so it can be viewed on modern gear. I have no connection with these folks and I'm sure there ar e other companies providing the same sort of service but I found their site interesting and I can only imagine the old equipment they must keep runnin g in order to process all of the old formats.

My VHS tape player is long gone and I haven't used a film camera since the mid 1980's. When I see new doctors I hand them a thumb drive containing my medical records. Media formats seem to be ever changing and I save a lot of stuff to my Google Drive and One Drive accounts so I can access it whereve r I might be as long as there is WiFi. What's going to happen if people sav e everything to "The Cloud" and pass away with no one else having a passwor d to their accounts? I imagine a lot of memories will be lost. ?( ?)?

[8~{} Uncle Memorable Monster

[Dean Hoffman]

And there are the pictures of people dressed up and/or posing like they did in days gone by. The pictures are of strangers. No names, dates, etc on them to identify long gone friends, ancestors, and events.

[Frank]

I'm considering one of those one box deals where you fill it with old films, media and tapes etc and for a couple of hundred bucks get all copied to modern media.

[John Albert]

I've thought about this, too.

Up until the digital age, analog "records" such as pictures, handwritten or even typed personal papers (such as diaries), things like video tapes and even record collections were all "touchable" -- and "discoverable" -- "in the physical world" because they existed as "physical things".

Someone could pick up and examine a picture, and enjoy it, without knowing who the individuals in the picture were. Of course, they had even more value to those who DID know.

But in the digital realm, one's "record of life" exists in bits and bytes that have no form that will survive beyond the one who created/maintained them. Often such data lies behind passwords and on encrypted drives that no one other than the owner/creator has access to -- unless the owner leaves specific instructions for others on how to find and access such data.

In many and perhaps most instances, with the death of the data's owner, the data will "die", as well. And along with it, will vanish the landmarks of one's life. Not even an image will be left behind.

Have you ever visited the site "findagrave.com"? At first, I thought it was only for famous individuals. But looking further, it's now a publicly-accessible archive for

-any- grave of anyone. And along with the basic details can be found pictures and a description of that individual's life, as well as where he/she lays in death.

I've created a few memorials for deceased relatives myself.

It gave me the idea that a website might be created in which individuals -- while still alive -- could archive "the stuff of their life". Not like facebook, but rather more like a "wikipedia of the common man". Open to anyone who wanted to look. One's digital repository for the ages...

[gfretwell]

There were SCSI connected drives for 9 track tape but most used differential SCSI. You could get a differential SCSI card but it was unusual. They were really aimed at AS/400s. The other issue was software to support them. IBM did make a PS/2 machine that ran DOS VSE tho. That had a 360/370 interface card that would run almost anything that would run on a mainframe. I bet there are less than a dozen of them running today.

[clare]

Get the important stuff off of "media" and onto "archival paper"

[gfretwell]

The government and industry disagree with you. The last bastions of big piles of moldy paper are going electronic. These days court documents and legal documents are PDF files. The day of paper files may finally be behind us, only 40 years after it was predicted by the computer folks.

[gfretwell]

The fact is the insurance companies already have access to your medical records right now, at least anything you did not pay cash for and did not try to claim. Even then you would have had to lie about your name when you got the service and these days they want to see more ID than you need to vote. When we all get our chip it will be academic anyway. As soon as the scanner by the door reads your chip, your whole life will pop up on their computer. It is sort of like what happens now when a license plate scanner on a cop car sees your plate. I predict that before long we won't need tags because we will all be required to have transponders in our car, perhaps reading the chip in your arm and transmitting that info too. Bear in mind "Big Brother" was from a book about 1984. Look behind you.