As you might know, the most archival storage medium is paper. It’s also the most common and the cheapest. (Yes, rock is more archival but paper is easier to carry around.)
Yet we still digitize almost everything in the belief that this will preserve that information. But as file formats, storage formats, software and hardware become obsolete, this information may be lost.
Vinton “Vint” Cerf, recognized as a founder of the Internet and currently vice-president of Google, this week stated:
In our zeal to get excited about digitizing, we digitize photographs thinking it’s going to make them last longer, and we might turn out to be wrong.
(…)
We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it. We digitize things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artifacts that we digitized. If there are photos you really care about, print them out.
In 2013, the Photo Marketing Association launched its Print it or Lose it campaign to encourage consumers to print their valuable photos rather than risk accidental loss of those digital images.
