Maybe not so wise.
The one thing that for literally thousands of years that has been
consistent, is our ability to "see" hardcopy, as long as it survived the
forces of nature. We still have good examples of cuneiform, papyrus
scrolls, paper based letter and books, etc. As long as the substrate
and the colorant held up, it is usually at least veiwable, if not
interpretable. The same holds true for silver based photographs (I'm
referring to black and white where real silver is left behind). I have
many images in my family archives that date back over 100 years.
However, I have "digital files" of letters, music, images, etc, that
date back only 5 years are are no longer accessible. Not just because
the media has failed, and in some cases it has, but more often because
the format, the media type or the program needed to interpret it is no
longer functional or available. I have letters and graphics I produced
on my Commodore 64, my Atari 800XL, my Amiga. In some cases, the
equipment might still work, if I could find all the parts and cables,
and set it up to read the disks... now where did I put my version of
Word Perfect for the Amiga? And what the heck was the NAME of the word
processor I used for my C-64??
LUCKILY, I made a habit of almost always printing out a hard copy of a
letter I sent for filing, because i have needed to refer back to some,
and needed copies, which I was able to make from the copy I kept.
Otherwise, I really don't think I would be spending the 4-6 hours to
find and set up my C-64 and hunt down the 5.25" floppy and cross my
fingers that it works.
If you were working with computers as long as I have (my very first
programs were done at university, on punch cards on a mainframe, on a
terminal connected with a telephone coupling modem) you'd rapidly see
the value of having real tangible hard copy. Try to find a microfilm
machine today, even better see how much luck you have locating a
functional microfiche machine. Media changes all the time, I have at
least 8 different storage methods here, not including the hard drives
which changed interfacing half a dozen times. I have some 10" Bernoulli
drives in storage, I have syquest 10, 20, 44meg removable, PD, 8"
floppy, 5.25" floppy (single and double sided and density, 3.5 single
and double sided and density (HD), zip disks, CD-R, CD-RW, and soon
DVD-R and RW (and the dual layer).
And that doesn't even discuss the dozens of compression and archiving
systems that came about and differing file formats. Oh yeah, what about
several dozen operating systems, and computer types. Apple, Atari,
Atari (FM?) 16 bit, Commodore, Amiga, IBM, PC, Mac...
So the supposed "wisdom" is flawed. My film negatives just need a light
source and maybe a lens to view and reproduce, my paper letters the
same. But digital requires the ability for those zeros and ones to be
interpreted into something. A file header is damaged, and you may not
know if you are looking at a midi file, an image, a movie, a word
processing file, part of an old copy of software, or part of a split
file. Even a photo with a scratch and a tear in it, can be pretty well
reconstructed.
So, sorry, but I'll take film and hard copy image over a digital file
for archiving, and that's were it would be "nice" if it didn't fade away
in 5 years or so...
Art
I've taken as many as a thousand or so 35mm