Back Up!

A  recent tweet from an old blog-pal spurred me to back up all my recent image files. I hadn’t done it in a couple of years so the backups managed to fill a dozen DVDs. As I was doing it, I wondered if they would ever be used.

The recent Forbes article Your Top 10 Things Your Kids Don’t Want lists, at number 3, Paper Ephemera. I am one who does have a fair amount of paper in my archives, except for maybe a box or two I don’t think my progeny will be interested in any of it. I’ve posted some of it here over the years, complete strangers have found some of it very interesting. But not my kids.

The most interesting things there are those that tell a story. Taken out of context a photo or  other memento has to have some pretty compelling imagery or other information to pass the test of time. A digital archive is space-saving but prone to irreversible “digital rot” which, despite what hi-tech thrillers imply, is usually gone forever. But these “stories” have some intangible worth. That is one reason I continue posting here, assuming Google doesn’t pull the plug on Blogger, these things will endure in some form, at least for a while. In the long term, of course, it doesn’t matter, but the long term is beyond human existence:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he takes under the sun?
One generation passes away, and another generation comes forth: but the earth abides for ever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to his place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, and turns about unto the north; it whirls about continually, and the wind returns again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

~Ecclesiastes 1, 2-12