After the passing of my mother-in-law, I went through the big cardboard box of photos that she had collected for years with the goal of splitting them up among my husband's family. Soon enough the photos just stopped. Surely there were more somewhere? Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. There weren't anymore. I knew that photos had been taken. Nearly everyone in the family had a camera. So what happened? The digital age happened. Those cameras were now digital. The albums were a folder on a hard drive. We'd stopped printing the photos and they were reduced to a series of ones and zeros. In a lot of cases, those images got sucked into the black hole of super cool tech.
The problem with super cool tech is that it doesn't stay super cool for long. After all, the 3.5 inch floppy disk was once super cool tech. Floppy disks gave way to CDs, CDs gave way to DVDs and DVDs gave way to thrumb drives. Now, we have Cloud based storage. In 2022, how are you going to read anything off a floppy disk, much less rescue your kid's baby photos?
How many times have you turned on your camera only to find those photos you took on vacation 2 years ago?
Some people are really on top of backing up their devices and data, but most people just don't have time or just don't make time. Life gets in the way and we'll get to that project on some random rainy day or weekend we have free. Chances are though that your super cool tech is going to crash, get corrupted or lost before that weekend ever rolls around.
The same applies to all those photos that you've uploaded to Facebook, then erased off your phone to free up space. I'm sure most people remember MySpace. Facebook and Instagram will eventually give way to another type of social media. What happens to all the content you've uploaded when it does?
We've identified the problem, but now what? Here are some important steps to at least minimizing the size of the black hole.
1. Back up your devices; phone, camera and laptop.
The simplest step is to start with your phone. Plug it into your laptop and it will automatically sync, saving your photos. You could stop here, but now that you're on a roll go to Step 2.
2. Back up your laptop onto an external hard drive. That will not only save your photos, but all the important documents and content on your laptop. However, even an external hard drive will eventually become obsolete. So on to Step 3.
3. Print your photos! The great thing about super cool tech is that its easier than ever to print your photos. Tiny printers no bigger than the palm of your hand now exist that can be hooked up to your phone so that you can print that cute photo you just took of your new puppy.
So now are we back to storing prints in cardboard boxes? Or a shoebox? Hopefully not! Those memories belong in a place of honor in an album, in an archival box or maybe even a frame in a contemporary wall gallery.
Now that you have preserved your memories in several different ways and something catastrophic happens your photos will be safe from the cold, dark abyss of the black hole of super cool tech.
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