Are We In The Next Dark Age?
By a show of hands, who here remembers the floppy disk?
That would be the “3D printed save icon” for the younger generations. When was the last time you saw one, let alone USED one? These data storage devices were prevalent just over two decades ago, and now they are considered to be obsolete relics. CDs have already become all but obsolete, and current research shows that USBs will be heading that way sooner than we all think. We are living in an era with technology that is advancing at an unheard of rate.
So how can you ensure that your family’s treasured memories are secure for the next 100 years?
It’s simple: print. Prints, canvases, albums, these are all tangible methods to preserve your memories, and by preserving them they can now be handed down to the following generations. Once you have something in hand that can be viewed at any time, without the need for technology and electricity, you now have a legacy. You have a story, with visual representation, of what once was. According to Rick West, a data manager at Google, “We may [one day] know less about the early 21st century than we do about the early 20th century,”. We are living in a time that may be left out of human history due to the lack of physical documentation in the presence of an all digital era.
This “digital dark age” has yet to be seen as much of our information, photos, and other files are still readable to some degree.
But did you know that CDs are only estimated to last for one to two decades before becoming too corrupt to even read? Nearly all of the recently manufactured computers are being made without CD-ROM drives, and some of Apple’s recent PCs are being made without USB drives as well. Studies have shown that whatever precedence Apple sets, the majority of tech builders follow suite. We can expect cloud storage to take priority over tactile storage devices. This is cause for concern since the cloud is nothing but internet storage which means, no internet, no memories.
