Mama, Don't Take My Kodachrome Away

Far be it for me to stand in the way of progress. I waited for the day when most everyone in this country had at least one home computer. I remember telling my mom some twenty-five years ago that one day people would pay for everything with a card that would access their bank account. That said, will future generations have hard evidence to sift through that tells them of their family history?

After my father died last December, I took some time to look through shoe boxes full of old family photos, stretching back to the '20's. Many contained people I didn't know. Some pictures identified the folks on the back, some did not. My dad wasn't one to save personal correspondence; there may have been a letter or two, or a postcard. But, at least there was something physical.

All right. So, what does this soul-baring have to do with Mediacopia? Well, the media we use for photography and writing to one another has changed over the last decade or so. As you know, everything's gone digital. Where one might have once stored unsorted photos in a shoe box in a closet, now pictures are saved to flash drives. Where correspondence was once something to be saved and cherished - because someone else took the time to write and mail it - now it's something we dash out several times a day, with the recipient typically reading and sending it to a virtual trash.

What will people sort through in the decades to come? When I think of the combined nature of our use-and-delete culture and the relatively short life-spans of computer hardware, I can't seriously believe that the pictures taken and the emails sent today will be around in ten years. Sure, some will. Some folks will be steadfast and dedicated to preserving such things. But, I suspect they will be in the minority.

I'm not trying to bring you down. I suppose I just want folks to think about this. Hard copies. Not of everything. Just of some of the things that matter to us, so that someone somewhere down the line will be able to hold it, to look at it, to read it, and touch that piece of the past.