Are you preserving your digital history?
Posted by aluminumnek@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 47 comments
Im having to recover data from a 2TB drive that I have for the 100k+ photos and thousands of albums from my music collection. While sorting out the data, I began to think about all these details of my life and what to do with it. The music collection I will most definitely keep for future family members to browse. Though the question of what to do with photos keeps toiling in my head. Besides deleting dupes, awful shots, and pet photos that no one will care about, I can’t help but wonder how to deal with my photos.
For one example I have pics of an exGF that wanted/insisted that I document our life together: pics range from us on adventures, her wardrobe changes, intimate times, cooking(she was a chef), to drunken nights playing Wii bowling, you name it. She doesn’t mind me saving them. Keep what I want, delete the ones I don’t is her attitude.
To things other things like flowers in my gardens over the years, photos of my bands, various aspects of my life, family, things that caught me eye, etc…
But anyways, how do you determine what to save and what to delete? With our generation being the first to have cameras in our pockets, Im curious how others save their posterity, or how to decide what to save. Do I want future family to see my entire life or just certain aspects?
Also if you are preserving your life, what format, system are you using, how are you doing it. One concern is that file formats change for better ones over time. How can I be sure something will be saved, say for an example family members a 100 years from want to take a trip into my history. I’d like to save what I could to give show a wide range of my life. I’ve gone through old family photos and there would be tremendous gaps in time. Now that’s so easy to save any and everything digitally the vast amount of data can be overwhelming.
I also have a large box full of film shots of past families that I want to save but set plan on how to preserve them but that’s another subject.
If you’re not saving your digital life, why not?
apost8n8@reddit
The government has it all copied somewhere so I’m not worried about it.
DooDooCat@reddit
Definitely GenX in these comments. The underlying theme is obviously, "whatever"
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Indeed
redtesta@reddit
Oh lordy, just had a conversation the other day. It goes very deep. Little sad or a lot sad and depressing but reality. I could write a book on this.
classicsat@reddit
I am saving what photos I can.
I really need to get a new HDD, and go through organize and migrate stuff over.
grumpyhousemeister@reddit
We inherited a house from my wife’s uncle. The old man was 90 and an avid photographer. We threw away generations of cameras (nothing special) and dozens of photo albums filled with images of dead strangers.
A single photograph is a story An archive is a burden.
deedeejayzee@reddit
Real sensitive or personal digital things, I keep stored in my safe. My best friend has the instructions to destroy it all. He will
lgramlich13@reddit
As a former pro photographer I can say that, if you want to keep a photo, you'd better print the photo. Even digital media degrades over time, and files are somewhat easily corrupted.
RandomSerendipity@reddit
I have a digital buisness selling assetts online in a virtual game. I'm able to leagally leave my account & buisness to someone else via a LW&T and the game gods will hand over my account.
PrickleAndGoo@reddit
Well, I think AI is going to be pretty wild in the future. So, all that digital content, even bad pictures, will help create a "digital version" of you. Not anything sinister, but, your Great Grandkids will be able to say, "show me what aluminumnek was like", and, an interesting facsimile will pop up, walking, talking, etc. The more content, the more accurate. Will it be completely accurate? No. But, will your descendents 100 years from now care about 100% accuracy? No.
As far as that music collection... yeah... no one's going to dig through your music collection. With the world of music at their Spotify fingerprints, who's crawling through grampa's music? But, I guess back to the AI thing, I guess they could say, "play me a song aluminumnek would like". I guess the only caveat there is if streaming services get so expensive that OG "downloaded" music will be at a premium.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Very astute points. I never considered that. Thank you
PrickleAndGoo@reddit
What!? A thoughtful response on Reddit!?
Oh wait, this is GenX, where we're not all goofy kids. ;)
Thanks for the... well... Thanks!
wayyzor@reddit
You still have a music collection on a hd?
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Yeah thousands of albums that I have acquired over the years. I refuse to use streaming services to pay to listen to songs that I’ve already paid for. I have an iPod nano in my VW that I use just for the car. I take it out every few months and swap out albums. Plus a lot of what I have is experimental, obscure, rare albums that aren’t found on streaming services. I keep albums on my iPhone that I can use with my watch while Im riding my bike, yard work etc.
wayyzor@reddit
I'm impressed, I've lost my collection multiple times over the years. I still have my CDs/tapes/albums, but I love my MP3 collection from the 'peak' downloading days.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Plus I can sell my remaining discs on Discogs. It still baffles me the prices people will pay for certain discs.
Im not one of those hi-go enthusiasts that only listen to music in a certain format (flac, ogg, etc). I started loving music when I was in high school, finding new sounds the old fashion way by reading liner notes, magazine articles. It would be a shame not to save my efforts in some ways.
Thinking even if I saved my digital collection for future family they would have a chance to listen to music that may be otherwise even more difficult to find in the future.
OveritAll1966@reddit
I'm deleting as much of my footprint as I can
ParticularCurious956@reddit
A couple of years before I divorced my ex, his mom came over with a moving box, one of the smaller "book boxes" full of photos of him and other family members. A few photos had info written on the back, most did not.
I was the picture keeper of the household and I had no idea what to do with that box. I didn't know most of the people in the group photos, and only could pick out about half of the little kid photos of ex.
It was so overwhelming. I can't imagine doing that to someone else in the future.
My general plan, should I ever act on it, is to make printed albums for each of the kids, hitting the highlights of their lives. Maybe a smaller one for them and any potential grandkids that have some pictures of me and extended family members. Everything will be clearly labeled, so there's no question about who is in the photo or why it was saved. But it's going to be a chore.
One_Hour_Poop@reddit
I've uploaded and saved literally tens of thousands of photos from the phone I'm using now, dating back to my very first digital camera from 2006, on four separate hard drives that i keep in separate places for redundancy.
I'm 1000% aware that nobody else cares about these pictures but me. Hell i barely browse through them myself except for maybe two or three times a year, but when i do, they're fascinating glimpses into the recent past.
Sad truth: I know my grandparents names, but i don't know their parents names. They had whole entire lives and i don't even know their names. It seems like it's the natural order of things for the present generation to live in the present, and for the past to slowly be forgotten. I know in fifty years that if I'm even remembered at all, it will be a distant memory. I keep my digital archives for me, maybe my kid if she's interested. Beyond that, if every last bit of evidence of me crumbles to dust, so be it.
Cue "Dust in the Wind."
NegScenePts@reddit
Lol...nope. My life is not important. Nothing I have now will be of any use to future generations, and to think so is kinda the height of hubris.
When I die, candid proof of my existence dies too. My name will be in my country's records as born, lived, and died...that's it. Nobody wants to browse through my music collection, nobody wants to see my cat pictures, I am not the main character, and none of the rest of us are either. The fact that we THINK we're important is the reason the planet has maybe three generations left before shit hits the fan.
...but I digress. Went a bit far. No, I'm archiving nothing. Even digital hoarding is considered hoarding, except it requires a smaller dumpster when our relatives are clearing out our house.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Valid points. Thanks for the you for sharing.
This same issue has been on my mind as well. I have one daughter and talks about not having children. Should I even begin to save anything if I may have no immediate family down the line. I have a brother and he has 3 children. Im not sure how he’s going to handle this issue. As well as if they would even be curious enough to keep them
NegScenePts@reddit
My wife and I are child-free, and while we do have nieces and nephews, we are not a close family. I have a sister that is 16 years younger than me, but I don't expect her to safeguard my 'history', since there's no real reason to do so. Maybe some enterprising human will come up with an archiving service that storehouses all this digital info for future generations to use for historical research or retro nostalgia, in which case sure, I'd donate as much as I could. Kinda like a digital 'donate my body to science' thing, I guess.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
My brother and I are 18 months apart but not close and rarely communicate with each other even though I’ve tried to maintain a relationship, he’s not putting in an effort but anyways… that donate your digital life for research sounds like a great idea
happycj@reddit
I am not.
As my Dad's Alzheimers progressed further and further, and my Mom and Sister were left to take care of the house and all their belongings - including 10,000 uncatalogued and unsorted photographic slides - and realized that I'm the last one in my family line. There isn't anyone coming who is going to treasure my history, which, just to be clear is freakin' AMAZING. I've had an astonishing life so far, but not one that anyone else is going to vibe with or learn from, or whatever.
For my family, I have two cloud backups - Google and Apple - of all the family photos and stuff, that back each other up for redundancy. But, as people pass away and there are fewer people who know who is in any of these photos, I'm going to let it go.
I honestly think that with the upcoming break up of Google's businesses, Google Drive will be the first to go. It'll either be spun off as a new commercial enterprise, or be walled off to only support certain apps, similar to how OneDrive works with Office365. And it will become too expensive for me to keep up the monthly fees for no real reason other than my own nostalgia.
So yeah. I use Mixtiles to print out images I really want to keep, and I put them up on the wall. The rest go into what is basically the trash can that I will dump some day.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
thanks for your input. perhaps you could publish a book about your amazing life?
i only use icloud for phone backups. i dont use google products because of their intrusive behaviors. whatever I decide to save will be on SSDs. perhaps i can make a time capsule of sorts.
thanks for sharing
happycj@reddit
Meh. I'm just another middle-aged white man with all the privileges that come with that, living through a time in history before and during the advent of the internet. There's not much relatable to a wider populace. I am a professional writer, though, so it gives me a little bit of a skewed idea of what people want to see in a book...
LakeCoffee@reddit
Just photos and videos for me. Any games and music I have can easily be downloaded again from somewhere so they don't need to be saved. My letters are private and don't need to be preserved. Emails aren't usually interesting like carefully thought out handwritten letters. There isn't anything there worth coming back to.
I'm starting to whittle down my photos. There are so many. No one will ever need 10 shots of me in the ferris wheel at the fair. One is enough. A lot of the photos are completely meaningless to anyone who wasn't there and don't need to be kept. Most of the videos will never be watched again, so they can go too. The sheer volume makes it too overwhelming and tedious for anyone to bother with (including me, haha). Narrow it down and people might want to look at it all after you're gone.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Im bad about taking multiple shots of something then discerning which is the better shot. But that’s just the photog in me. Deleting dupes is a job unto itself. Thanks for sharing
LakeCoffee@reddit
I bought an app called photo sweeper. It shows thumbnails of the duplicates, where they are and deletes the ones you choose to delete. My problem is the photos are spread across 2 cloud services, several TB drives and devices. My plan is to download it all onto one drive, run the app and then replace all the archives with the paired down one. The cloud made it way too easy to keep so much stuff.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Will definitely look into that. Thank you!
No_Ninja_3740@reddit
I’m not saving anything for future generations because I have no family (that I speak to) and no kids. When I die it’ll all go in the trash by whoever’s job it is to clean out my living space.
But I do have multiple organized hard drives for myself to look back on.
rraattbbooyy@reddit
Ah, yes, I too have an extensive porn collection. 😁
No_Ninja_3740@reddit
😂 No, more like thousands of pictures of my (now deceased) cat and some vacation photos of my husband and I.
rraattbbooyy@reddit
This doesn’t help you, but since you asked, I’m not preserving anything. I don’t have much of a digital history to begin with. Not many physical pictures of me exist. And if you googled my name you wouldn’t find anything. I prefer anonymity. I am the opposite of whatever an instagram influencer or YouTube famous person is.
The photos folder on my phone is mostly memes and comics, and screen shots from my TV that I wanted to share at some point. There aren’t many pictures of people and places, experiences. It’s important to note that I was never married and have no children, so there is nobody to leave any record behind for even if I was inclined to do it. I’m content to let everything that is me die when I do. I have two brothers. If I die before them, they split everything I own 50/50. That’s as much thought as I put into my legacy.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
This does help! It gives me an insight as to how others handle this. I like hearing people on both sides of the fence. Thanks so much for sharing
groundhogcow@reddit
In the end I will leave two thumb drives to my kids with family photos and history. I expect one to throw it away and the other to lose it.
I will leave the files online for download for anyone who wants them. I expect zero downloads. Then the money I payed to the server will run out and they will be deleted and everything will be gone. As it should be.
Otherwise_Gear_5136@reddit
I have had this exact conundrum. I don't know what to do with it all.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
It’s overwhelming
EnergyCreature@reddit
My wife and I print out our photos at the end of the year like now and put them inside of books.
The only other digital stuff are DRM free games, mp3s/flac and movies and I have a local server backs those up with my family having access to it.
Some of the games I put on a custom thumb drive with safe files if they have them
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Once printed do you still keep the digital copies? How will your printed ones stand the eat of time?
My movies, tv shows, and music i plan on using with a server. Which also has me thinking about making backups of backups.
EnergyCreature@reddit
Use a binder with plastic sleeves. Then seal them. The digital are saved in folder under years. They are taken off of our personal cloud server and put on our local.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Interesting idea! Thanks for the tip. Like I stated above I have fam photos from several generations back. It would be a monumental task to sort, scan, organize. Selling the old photos seems hella easier, and less taxing. Thank you
EnergyCreature@reddit
Yeah I had to scan and take photos of pics from older books from my family that were falling about. It was a summer project back in 2011...sorting was annoying.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
My one of my grandfathers spent his last days organizing family photos into albums and had been curious as to how long his photo albums would stand the test of time
Agent7619@reddit
Nope. I'm headed down the zero digital and physical footprint path. I've had to deal with too much garbage and unnecessary shit from the estate of deceased relatives lately. It's all trash.
Whatever-ItsFine@reddit
I'm definitely keeping pet photos. They're as much a part of who I am as any photos I have.
aluminumnek@reddit (OP)
Awesome