Analogue Media
Before I continue my series of posts about the Vatican Library and move on to the problems that took my breath away after visiting it, I need to write a few more posts to set the scene. For those who have only just started following me, here are the previous posts:
Have you ever considered, ladies and gentlemen of digital transformation, that in the long run digitisation makes knowledge less accessible?
LOL, what??? We all know that digital documents are very easy to send over a network, share, make available, copy, and so on. Digitised documents seem far more accessible than their analogue versions.
But think about this: we need nothing to examine an analogue document—a sheet of text, a book, or a photograph, for example. We have eyes, and that is enough. We pick up the document and start reading it straight away.
To examine a digital document, however, we need an intermediary: some kind of device—a computer, tablet, phone, e-reader, television, and so on—running some kind of software. This intermediary converts the digital document into something our eyes can read. Without it, a digital document is merely a collection of zeros and ones stored on some medium. Without an electronic intermediary, there is NO WAY for us to read a digital document. EVER!!!
“Never” is a frightening word.
If you still do not see where I am going with this, I have a small experiment for you. At work, we are all digital transformation people—we make digital transformation happen. But what about at home? How do you store your family photographs, for example? In the cloud—which one? On a local NAS? What will you leave your children: passwords to cloud services, a NAS gathering dust on top of a cupboard in the hall? Will your children be able to make sense of it all decades from now? And will they even want to, even if they have everything they need?
How do you organise storage at home—of photographs, to keep things simple? Do you have a process that regularly turns digital photographs into analogue ones, so that decades from now your own children can show your own (great-)grandchildren what you looked like, without having to jump through hoops with cloud services, logins, compatibility problems, read errors, vanished services, sanctions—the list could go on forever?
Think about it!
To be continued…
The photos show me at kindergarten, at a Pioneer camp, and by the sea. I am sure many people have similar pictures. Kudos to our parents!
