While I was starting my research during a masters program in museum studies, I was very interested in the ethics of conservation, in a strictly physical sense with art works. At the time (circa 2002), the digital was too elusive for me, too mysterious to really grasp and get a handle of, and in some ways, it is still a bit of a mystery for most. There are tried and true methods in physical conservation work for known materials like oil paints and stone, but with digital media the waters seem to be much more unknown and murky. We've probably all had the experience of a corrupt file or an old format that has no immediately available software solution to access it. In this regard, the digital format is quite fragile and dependent on a number of ways to access and read the file.
One thing I've always thought was so difficult in the whole topic of migration is taking stock of all the implications in the digital life cycle of any media format- with questions like: What are we transferring? What is the loss? What are we OK with losing along the way? The basic example here would be a word processing file. Are we necessarily worried about format? Does the original structure matter? (Should it?) Are we really just concerned with a raw capture of the straight text? At what point are we so far derived that it has completely unraveled, and when do we call it a day and call it digital death?
Heidegger wrote about physical art works as having a "virtuous circle", a way to set a lifespan on finite objects. I always loved this applied to the museum setting. We can set up climate controlled display and storage facilities all day long, but there is an inevitable death of the item at some point curators and collection managers have to address. I think there is a parallel with the digital format. We can reformat, migrate and even recreate digital media, but there are rarely discussions of digital lifecycles. Emulation can be a life support of sorts, but how long before the plug gets pulled? Or will there be an eventual be all end all format? Or do we just create a thousand copies and expect someone down the road to find an answer? I think these are all interesting things to think about, particularly when having conversations about digital projects and the concept (or illusion) of longevity in the digital realm. I had a boss who used to like to say it was their goal to be retired by the time the next big paradigm shift took place that would lead to a mass migration of all our standard formats, but it seems that may be sooner than we might be willing to think about with rapidly evolving technology.
I often think of my five year old niece quite a bit in this digital age. She'll have a 100% digital childhood. She'll never know the hilarity of recording home answering machines or mix tapes or Polaroids or the 1 hour film developing "hut" in many parking lots across the US (or even the notion of sending film out). She already consumes digital media at a pretty high rate for a kid. She's comfortable with whoevers smart phone she's managed to nab- taking selfies, recording herself singing frozen songs (with multiple takes, of course) and even last week she started to email a picture she had taken on my phone to herself as I'm sure she's seen the grownups do. (And ensuing hilarious moment where I ask her what her email address is, half afraid the kid might actually already have one... but she did not. Phew!). It's the generation of instant gratification with digital cameras, but is also in many cases that of decreasing quality of image, audio and video by many of these cheaply made commercial products. Digital media has a consumer consumption quality to the upcoming generations that is only growing at an alarming rate.
It is a changing tide but I think we have to know that loss in some way is inevitable. We are not perfect keepers, nor do we have the perfect, impenetrable storehouse for digital assets. I may also be an analog girl in a digital world, but I'd like to also think I'm a realist.
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