Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: joneil on April 12, 2008, 10:04:39 am
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Here is a question for all of you, that i have no answer for.
I am involved in a local heritage group. One of our big issues, well, for all historians, is the giant "memory hole" we are creating at this very time. In no particular order, here are the issues:
1) Photoshop
I've been in photography for 25 years, and 25 years ago, what it took a lot of expensive equipment and years of training do to can now be done by a 12 year old on a computer in moments. For example, B&W photos taken on an old Kodak brownie were printed as is, the good, bad & ugly - nothing was changed because very few people had the talent, know how and equipment to alter negatives by hand. I suspect that today there's more photo editing going on in the average household than the entire propaganda depatment of the British Intellligence Unit during WW II.
Almost every photo editing program has some sort of "one step" or "one shot" photo fix up button.
So my point is this - I am NOT speaking artisically - but from the point of view as a historian and & archivist - what can we belive anymore. Every magazine,movie and professional image is photoshopped anymore. People are doing the same at home. 200 years from now, what "real", untouched images are we going to have left?
Yes, images including photography have been staged and formated in such a way to show what people wanted to see, not what rally was, but my point is, there wee enough amatuer and home shooters that we can get reasonable handles on what things looked like 100 years ago. For exmaple, 100 years ago a photo of a factory for business purposes might be touched up by hand, but local neighbourhood photos taken ont he old Kodak brownie were not.
As a historian, I can tell you, this is simply not true today- everybody wants things to look "beautifu:.
2) - Archival standards.
We have a real problem in medium. Almost all CDs and DVDs are NOT archival quaity, unless you are special ordering Taiyo Yuden disks. Go to this link as one small example of what i am talking about:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm (http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm)
So, most people cannot read old 3.25" floppy disks, our cDs and DVDs will nto stand up, what will we have 100 years form now.
There's another issue with upgrading software too. A year or so ago a news tory made the rounds about how the US navy upgraded to a new version of autocad. Well the new version imported the old drawings, but it made some very sublte changes - for example a very thin line became a thing dotted line. When you are dealing with teh innards of nuclear reactor, such small changes matter.
But here's my pint - not from art point of view, but form ARCHIVAL points of view, it is vitally esstential that everything remain unchanged. Those tiny little differences that may or may not take place as you import your jpegs and TIFFs from one upgrade to another, or even say your Nikon NEF files, and you upgrade your Nikon software, and something changes, do we loose something. Again I must repeat myself, this is from the archival standard.
right now, the only electronic format I know of that preserves every little bit of data without changing (I hope) is the astronomical FITS format, but with the way software changes constantly, I am wondering there too.
3) - loss of media
While Epson does make archival quality inks, the vast, vast majority of family prints that are done at big box retail stores are NOT done with archival paper and inks. Even look at some of your old colour negatives - outside of Kodachrome, how many of you have old colour prints, slides and negatives where the dyes are fading?
The other sad fact is since 1870, almost all books are printed on paper that has acid in them. Very, very few books of any kind, fiction, non fiction, art, etc, are printed on acid free archival quality paper. We have books printed on old rag paper from 1850 that are in excellent shape, but a book form 20 years later is litterally falling apart.
Movie films too are affected. I was watching a program on TCM about how something like 50% of all movies made before 1945 are lost, and something like 80 or 90% of all movie made before 1930 (ish) have been forever lost. I stand to be corrected on thos figures, but you get the point
4) too much information
The average family on vacation might shoot a couple rolls of film. even somebody who shot 10 rolls of film would come back with what - 10x36 = 360 shots. Today, I talk to people who come back with something like 5 or ten 1, 2 or 54 gig cards full of photos, and the actual number of shots ranging in the thousands!
Here's the paradox - the more we have, the less time we have to sort the wheat from the chaff, and the less time we have just o keep it all together. Then everytime you buy a new computer, you have to transfer and backup, and sometimes people just don't have the time to do that. I've talked to many people who have lost images over the years.
Again, I am talking about the average family. Let me put it this way, I read a statistic the other day that says the average family in the USA spends LESS than 5 meals together *per week*. So, if the average family cannot find time in today's world to spend time for meals together, where's the time to copy photographs over and over agian? This i likely the wrong forum to ask this question as I assume most people here are diligent in their backups, but i am talking overall, real world, day to day living.
So there you - what's to be done? My personal solution is shooting 4x5, single sheet film, processing archival quality B&W negatives, and stored in a metal safe.
But I can tell you, from an archival point of view, not an artistic one, that all the image processing of modern day photography is turning into something of a disaster. And sadly, one that very few either know or care about
thanks for letting me rant
joe
PS - sorry for the typos and spelling, I know they are there, but cannot always see them. Sometimes dyslexia just plain sucks.
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You have some valid concerns, but they are vastly overblown. Photoshop has made compositing images and other fakery easier to do, but not much easier to do well. Getting the color and angle of the lighting to match to make a really convincing composite can't be done completely in Photoshop; some of that has to be done while shooting.
There's also the point that much more of daily life is being recorded in stills and video than ever before. So even if you weed out fakes and PS fun, there is a lot more "real" stuff out there than at any previous time in history.
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You have some valid concerns, but they are vastly overblown.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188930\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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Ah - maybe I should explain myself a bit better.
Just for the record, the views I expressed are from working directly with people who work in archives and archival medium. Not administraitors who have to be political and keep bad news to a minimum to ensure funding, but the real "foot soldiers" in the trenches, so to speak.
when I talk to these people, they are very worried, for some of the reasons I listed above, and more.
I could write a book on the subject, but I just want people to realize there is an issue. You should spend a day in an archives, and see all the little, day to day issues these people are facing. I honestly do not think you would consider my comments overblown (no insult intended)
Let me put it another way - think of archival standards at the same level as court or police evidence standards. Local example - the police in my city (last I saw) are still using film to record major crime investigations (in addition to digital). Why? archival standards.
If you were charged with murder, knowing what can be done with Photoshop, would you be happy if you were innocent and the only evidence against you was digital images? Or would you prefer to have your defence lawyer be able to examine the original negatives?
I personally know a man who spent ten years in jail for a murder he never committed (exoneration by the courts). In his case it was not digital images, but it was a case of fabricated evidence that put him there.
So you see, it's a serious issue - especially if it were to happen to you?
So I am not here to attack the use of Photoshop - I use it myself for commercial purposes - but there are huge issues. Weaknesses in digital media is one of several reasons why identity theft is such a huge issues. IMO, if we had archival standards exacted to digital media in the same fashion we have it on print media, a lot of the issues with ID theft would not exist.
So you see, it touches all areas. My issues above are just a few of the straws on the camel's back, so to speak, but I thought they wold be relevant ones to this board.
have a good one
joe
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Most pro-level DSLRs can embed a checksum in their image files that can be used to verify if the image has been altered or not. All Canon 1-series cameras have this feature; one of the accessories you can buy is a verification kit to check whether a file has been altered or not. But if you think film is immune from fakery, you are sadly mistaken. Compositing and other forms of alteration have been done for over 100 years.
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200 years from now, what "real", untouched images are we going to have left?
Moonrise over Hernandez.
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Moonrise over Hernandez.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189068\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Say what? Adams "Moonrise" negative was so thin it was chemically intensified twice. An exhibit last year at the Princeton U. Art Museum was specifically built around this image and included an original "straight" print that would hardly have deserved a second look plus highly hand-tooled versions of prints from each of the successive decades of the 40's to 70's. Significant differences are apparent in the evolution of Adams' aesthetic choices over that time period. You would be better served to select some other image for your example. Check the history first.
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As regards the main concern of this thread, I fear that your desire for archival purity is a lost cause, for (among others) the following reasons:
1) No one can afford to maintain archives in the way you suggest, 2) The cost of cataloging such archives means that they will not be accessible in any useful manner, 3) All history is revisionist, any information that survives will be re-contextualized to support the market requirements at the time of consumption. What anyone considered the original "truth" will be subsumed to support prevailing agendas.
Sorry.
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You would be better served to select some other image for your example.
Do you know what sarcasm is?
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My personal solution is shooting 4x5, single sheet film, processing archival quality B&W negatives, and stored in a metal safe.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188923\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
But won't the people of the future wonder why we lived in a world without color?
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Do you know what sarcasm is?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189105\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Touche' You got me on that one.
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right now, the only electronic format I know of that preserves every little bit of data without changing (I hope) is the astronomical FITS format, but with the way software changes constantly, I am wondering there too.
Haven't you heard of DNG??? It's a standardized format, open, fully documented, and anyone can use it or write software compatible with it. Adobe offers a free RAW > DNG converter that is updated as new camera models are introduced. And converting RAWs to DNG does not change the RAW image data whatsoever.
The average family on vacation might shoot a couple rolls of film. even somebody who shot 10 rolls of film would come back with what - 10x36 = 360 shots. Today, I talk to people who come back with something like 5 or ten 1, 2 or 54 gig cards full of photos, and the actual number of shots ranging in the thousands!
Here's the paradox - the more we have, the less time we have to sort the wheat from the chaff, and the less time we have just o keep it all together. Then everytime you buy a new computer, you have to transfer and backup, and sometimes people just don't have the time to do that. I've talked to many people who have lost images over the years.
The typical family practice of throwing the negatives in a shoe box is no better; they tend to get scratched, damaged, and misplaced quite often. Digital is more susceptible to loss from media failure, but that can be dealt with by backing up your data. And digital images are more likely to be posted online on Myspace or Photobucket or whatever, and get archived by Google and other search engines
So there you - what's to be done? My personal solution is shooting 4x5, single sheet film, processing archival quality B&W negatives, and stored in a metal safe.
Which is totally impractical for most people. 4x5 is a totally ridiculous camera system choice for most family photographs. As the price of storage media decreases, the disincentive for backing up data decreases as well. People who get burned by data loss tend to be more careful about backing up afterwards. In the mean time, the sheer volume of digital photos, video, and audio recordings guarantees that we will be the most thoroughly-documented society on Earth.
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Certainly some food for thought here.
I guess my first comment would be that, at least for color photography, the trend is almost entirely positive. As Henry Wilhelm has abundantly documented, essentially all consumer-level color prints from the 1960s to early 1980s have already deteriorated almost beyond repair due to the fugitive nature of Kodak's Ektacolor process. Sure, Kodachromes still look pretty good if they were stored properly, and a handful of incredibly devoted artists were making dye-transfer prints that still hold up. But even Cibachromes have a very finite lifespan, and how many average hobbyists were using Kodachrome once decent color negative film showed up? The color dyes in standard negatives aren't very stable, and how many folks keep them in cool, dark storage conditions?
Nowadays pigment inket printers are widely available, and the color stability of prints from them appear to exceed that of any previous process. Digital files may be vulnerable to issues of media stability and migration to new platforms, but TIFF and JPEG standards have been pretty solid, and bytes don't deteriorate like negatives do. I currently have all my image files on a single hard disk, with two identical back-up disks, one kept off-site. Each is about the size of a brick. My archive of 35 mm slides takes up far, far more space; they're far less accessible; they are the only original copy; and it's getting harder every day to buy a high quality slide scanner necessary to access them. My first good 4000 dpi film scanner is incompatible with current computers due to an outdated SCSI interface; my current 5400 dpi scanner is excellent, but it's no longer in production and support is disappearing.
Even for black & white photography, I would argue that those halcyon days of yore weren't so great. Yes, a carefully processed and meticulously washed fiber-based silver gelatin print has excellent image stability. But only a tiny fraction of darkroom silver gelatin prints meet this standard! Far more were haphazardly processed, incompletely washed, casually handled and printed on resin coated papers prone to all kinds of image deterioration. The jury is still out on the true long term stability of pigment monochrome inkjet prints, but so far things look good.
To me, it looks like the real challenge for future archivists and social historians won't be the inaccessability of digital image files compared to 19th century prints. It's going to be the immense volume of images, the endless terrabytes of them.
Just my 2 cents.
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If you were charged with murder, knowing what can be done with Photoshop, would you be happy if you were innocent and the only evidence against you was digital images? Or would you prefer to have your defence lawyer be able to examine the original negatives?
I personally know a man who spent ten years in jail for a murder he never committed (exoneration by the courts). In his case it was not digital images, but it was a case of fabricated evidence that put him there.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=188966\")
This is a frequently cited straw man argument against Photoshop and digital photography. For what it's worth, the purely mathmatical nature of digital imaging files makes any alteration or compositing far easier to detect than similar trickery using conventional chemical photography. There's a very clever book available recently that details the entire field:
[a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photoshop-Forensics-Cynthia-Baron/dp/1598634054/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208099623&sr=1-2]http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photoshop-Fore...08099623&sr=1-2[/url]
Great stuff in it if you're curious.
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Digital files may be vulnerable to issues of media stability and migration to new platforms, but TIFF and JPEG standards have been pretty solid, and bytes don't deteriorate like negatives do. I currently have all my image files on a single hard disk, with two identical back-up disks, one kept off-site. Each is about the size of a brick.
I 've had files deteriorate on a HD. And also the back ups were also affected as they updated the flaws.
To me, it looks like the real challenge for future archivists and social historians won't be the inaccessability of digital image files compared to 19th century prints. It's going to be the immense volume of images, the endless terrabytes of them. [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189213\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I have problems getting through just my own data! Aquisition of digital files is so easy, sorting and cataloguing them is still extremely hard work.
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History has always been controlled well by demagogues since they present only their version (i.e. 'History Channel'). Having multiple versions available for rapid comparison helps, and having user review forums helps too. For historical photos, I like the idea of seeing the original (or originals when diff. versions exist) side-by-side with restored versions. Not just to visualize the intended aesthetics of the original, or to verify and validate the changes, but most importantly, to explore the differences and learn....
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So I am not here to attack the use of Photoshop - I use it myself for commercial purposes - but there are huge issues. Weaknesses in digital media is one of several reasons why identity theft is such a huge issues. IMO, if we had archival standards exacted to digital media in the same fashion we have it on print media, a lot of the issues with ID theft would not exist.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188966\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
No offense, but that's not accurate. I do computer security for a living, and the primary enabling factors in ID theft have nothing to do with weaknesses in digital media. The factors contributing to ID theft are primarily social, with a few technical issues thrown in:
- It's a low-risk, high-reward crime: perpetrators can make a lot of money selling personal information without a huge risk of being caught. And when they do get caught, the penalties aren't severe enough to deter them.
- Building cheap, insecure, easy-to-use IT systems takes less time and is more profitable than building more secure systems. Corporate liability for bad IT security is almost non-existent. Cheap, fast or right? Pick two...
- Strong encryption is widely available, often for free. Applied intelligently, it could make ID theft much more difficult. See above about the tradeoff between cost, complexity and security. The vast majority of personal data held in commercial and government databases is not encrypted, so once primary access controls fail, the data is easily usable by the bad guys.
ID theft is rampant (and getting worse) largely because we, as a society, are willing to put up with it in exchange for the benefits of an information-intensive society and economy. We want to be able to use our credit cards in remote places, have our paychecks directly-deposited and our mortgage payments automatically withdrawn on time. We want loan approval and employment background checks in minutes or hours instead of weeks, and sometimes require instant access to medical records (which really CAN save lives...) We don't want to spend our time worrying about how the data gets stored or transferred. Thus far, we've done a poor job of balancing security with utility and problems like ID theft are one result. In my opinion, this will improve as society's information-awareness matures. None of this has to do with any inherent flaw in digital media. As long as there have been documents, there has been fraud.
I find the rest of this discussion compelling, but the ID theft issue isn't relevant to it, IMO.
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Daniel Bell
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A couple of thoughts:
I don't consider any of my images to have even the remotest historical value - the issue of archiving my images is my problem and I deal with it to my satisfaction. The issue of 5.25" floppy compatibility is an issue for the archaeologists, not for me. I'm sure the Smithsonian could deal with a 5.25" disk if they had to...
The issue of image manipulation is as old as images themselves. I'm sure there was controversy in the 16, 17 18th etc centuries when painters took liberties with their subjects (or perhaps more controversy when the images were, in fact, "realistic" as opposed to reflecting the self image of the portrait subject).
Having said that, your point regarding the archival quality of cd/dvd's is well taken. In fact I have a bridge in New York that I'm willing to sell cheap to anyone who's "backup" consists solely of that type of media.
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I have a near-foolproof and easy to use backup system that I've used since the early 80's, where I currently maintain about 30,000 files (approx. 4,000 photos), and hundreds of those files change every week. But nobody has ever shown an interest - all I see on this forum is interest in proprietary systems that will fail at some point.
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I will chime in here since this a source of anxiety for most of us. I believe nothing will last that long anyway, maybe the stones in our yards. The archive issue is something I have been rethinking lately. For one my film archive is far more manageable and user friendly because I don't need any fancy equipment to use it. I just look at my sleeves through a window or light table, and second because it used to be expensive to click the shutter, so you had less images to keep. Nowadays in our digital lives, the sheer volume of images are really starting to overwhelm me.
I do lots of commercial shoot and I archive everything I shoot, for several reasons. You never know you will be asked by the client for some image you shot last year to reuse in some other country or market. I you deleted that, then you lost some money and piss off your client. Clients expect photographers to keep copies of their jobs. I wish my archive was a couple tens of thousands but it is many times bigger, in the order of hundreds of thousands. I had to hire somebody to help me out making them findable in the media I keep them in.
This is due to something that arises another issue, which is that with digital photography it is very tempting to "sketch" with the camera a lot more than what we did with film. The beauty of of LF is precisely the contrary. The days I used to shoot fashion in 4x5, I verly seldom used more than 4 shots per image. You thought images before shooting, you made final images. With a DSLR machine gun you can very easily make 50 or more takes.
I try to shoot less and less, but it is not easy, I try to treat my camera as a LF camera, not always successfully.
I guess the best way to easily preserve our images is to print them to a decent size to archival standards.
Future archaeologists will probably find uninteresting all our professionally made images of creeks and trees and clouds. They probably find our mothers snapshots far more valuable, if they still keep.
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One point that was made here was how conventional backup systems will back up corrupted files. Rule #1 of a good backup system is *never* write over a backed up file unless the source file has been changed deliberately. Rule #2 is *never* write a newer file over an older backup copy unless you know why it changed and are reasonably certain the newer data is valid. All commercial backup systems fail at this as far as I'm aware.
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if you want to archive for a long time carve the bit stream into a rock!
photography is to young to be considered as a long time archival system.
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Don't be silly - this is much bigger than photo. This is about all digital data, be it programs to run things, secure documents, or even a set of data to precisely define and enable reconstruction of physical objects and devices. This is everything, eventually.
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I would have thought the main problem is providing the human resources to do the archiving. Moor'e Law is alive and doing well in the memory storage department.
The latest developments in memory storage, known as 'recetrack' memory are mind boggling. It is estimated that the new technology will be available in 5 to 10 years time and will hold 100x the data in the same space as current magnetic drives.
Lets do a bit of simple maths to get a glimpse of the possibilities here. Currently you can get a 320GB mobile (pocket) drive at a cost of roughly $1 per gigabyte or less. They run on power from the computer's USB socket and are so compact they literally fit into a shirt pocket (provided you don't bend down to tie your shoe laces).
100x320GB is 32 terrabytes (or is that terabytes?). In 10 years time, you'll be able to easily stick 32 terabytes in your pocket. The new technology is sold state too, so it should have reasonable archival qualities.
How much storage would be required for a million RAW files? I don't expect I will have taken more than a million images before I die. Currently, the average RAW file size is around 10MB (for me). However, considering the drive towards increased pixel count, let's say that average becomes 20MB over the course of time. A million megabytes is one terrabyte, so to store my 1 million images at the end of my life, I need just 20 terabytes of memory.
But my pocket 'racetrack' drive can store 32 terabytes. It's too big.
I'd better start taking more photos fast. Don't want to waste all that storage space .
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There are factors that drive this storage thing - one being when you grow into a new paradigm such as storing full length HD video (just an example!), and another overcoming the transfer rate limitation, which is as much of a problem as it was 20 years ago. But managing the files is easy if you get away from the common mindset and use dirmatch logic.
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There are factors that drive this storage thing - one being when you grow into a new paradigm such as storing full length HD video (just an example!), and another overcoming the transfer rate limitation, which is as much of a problem as it was 20 years ago. But managing the files is easy if you get away from the common mindset and use dirmatch logic.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=197369\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Transfer rate limitation? Moor's Law still applies to increasing speed, doesn't it.
My first DVD burner could write at just 2x. That's around 4GB of data in half an hour. Blu-ray burners, still in their infancy, can write at 4x. That's 25GB in 15 minutes, over 12x the transfer rate. HD video has about 6x the image data as standard definition.
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Sergio makes a good point about the not so subtle differences between film and digital capture as regarding storage. Shooting a cassette per garment was never considered a big deal in respect of the film/retained image equation, you just used up film to buy yourself the time to ease the model and get to the peak of the idea you were both working towards. Then, on the lightbox, a fairly quick squint through the loupe and you had your couple of keepers. So far, the same with digital (for me, with a very limited shooting rate nowadays) but the trouble starts after that, when those keepers are into your system.
It is/was simplicity itself and very fast to do as Sergio says, and find your image via the window or the lighbox; it´s not so easy now on a computer. Yes, I still try to know where to look, but nothing beats the quick human eye scan of a work-book! Possibly it´s just my fault and I´m not that good on computers, but why the hell should anyone have to be? We are supposed to be photographers, for heaven´s sake, not typists! Even posting these silly posts takes up a lot of editing time in Preview and even then I miss spelling errors; nowhere does it say the photographic bit is any more streamlined in digital, just more complicated, far more expensive and not at all user-friendly for at least this writer. The cost-of-film argument is meaningless in a pro context as it was the client´s problem, not yours, and any job worth doing had that little part well and truly covered.
Perhaps part of the storage problem might be that the very escape from film expense that digital created for the amateur is, as was indicated, simply a matter of too much trash kept inside the house as outside in the can.
History has had Dark Ages before; I´m sure it will survive this one. Thing is, apart from a few dedicated researchers of the past, who ever bothers to look anything up? Is human curiosity really still alive and all that well? Is Miss Celebrity as far as it goes?
Rob C
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Some thoughts: Transfer speed to backup is orders of magnitude slower than bus speed. Typical backup programs and methods are still in the Dark Ages. And when you're in the middle of work and everything data-wise has been allocated and is working OK, then comes the unexpected and you have to 1) Search your archives for many, not just one files. 2) Create a new backup, or install a new computer. 3) etc. etc. So don't estimate the capability of a system on ideal throughput.
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A few years ago I remember reading an article about a White House photographer who (at that time) shot B&W film exclusively, no digital, just to address the concerns you have listed. He thought it was important to have archival, unalterable documentation for historical purposes considering his subject matter and he had a great point. Unfortunately I forget his name. Seems the article may have been in PDN.
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I remember one, James Altgens I think the name was, captured some important photos in Dealey Plaza back in Nov. '63. Having a medium format B&W in those days really made the difference in archival quality. The same may hold true today in many cases.
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I have sworn by Kodachrome as a safe storage film for many a year, but trouble occurs even with that, not because of the film, I think, but because of the inevitable scuffing that happens when you pull a slide out of one of those transparent sleeves that hold 24 frames. I am as careful as anyone could possibly be with that material, but it still manages to get damaged. Naturally, material that has been through a stock library CAN fare even worse, as I know to my cost.
I suppose that it is a non-win situation as it ever was and perhaps ever will be.
Actually, I have just spent a few nights editing a collection of files that I want to make into a smaller, more powerful set. On a lightbox it would have taken a single session; with the computer I simply can´t get a big enough range of images on the screen, all at one time, at a size that makes for real comparison. It really does eat time and is simply not as convenient either.
Rob C
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I don't know if i did a good or even fair job of getting my point across, however, I was at a conference this weekend, and one session I attended was on forensic photo identification. Here's a couple links to explain one point of view on the subject:
http://www.forensicgenealogy.info/images/a...r_corrected.pdf (http://www.forensicgenealogy.info/images/a_dead_horse_of_a_different_color_corrected.pdf)
also
http://www.forensicgenealogy.info/the_digital_detective.html (http://www.forensicgenealogy.info/the_digital_detective.html)
Some of you may dismiss the topic of genealogy out of hand, however, modern genealogy has very little to do with proving you came from royalty. The biggest use of genealogy today is medical research. Does breast cancer run in your family, and are you concerned bout your daughter's chance for that disease. The use of genealogy and family medical history is just one component of the fight against many diseases.
Just something to chew on, when you ask yourself, who and why is somebody going to look at my photos (film or digital) 50 or 100 years form now.
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The issue of whether anyone looks at your photos in 50 years has many facets. One, assuming you're not famous or otherwise marketable as in Einstein's likeness on a can of paint for sale, if you have your images in a freely available archive on the Web, where anyone can examine them for research purposes, then the next facet to consider is whether there will be search software that can find specific content by examining the actual images, not relying on descriptions or other external tags etc. For example, I visualize the day when I can search a master film database (actual films digitized) for content such as "two men in bistro - one wearing red shirt", and from the search results, then zero in on the part of the video where such scenes are indicated.
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Mostly very valid concerns...
But then again, considering our amazing ability at acting stupidely even when all the elements required to show that history is once more going to repeat itself are still available, does it really matter?
Besides, isn't our society deeply trapped into a self fulfilling prophecy that both triggers and pre-requisites the death of memory?
Cheers,
Bernard
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All history is revisionist, any information that survives will be re-contextualized to support the market requirements at the time of consumption. What anyone considered the original "truth" will be subsumed to support prevailing agendas.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189100\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
This statement from Russell gets closest to the truth, in my opinion.
The RAW image from a DSLR is very archivable and difficult to alter in its original RAW state, but I guess we're working on it. How to manipultae a RAW image which, afterwards, still maintains its RAW status?
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Russell is correct of course, that all "history" as a practical matter is revisionist. One of my favorite absurdities is A. Lincoln - the erstwhile beloved of media pundits and neo-historians, who nonetheless killed more Americans than all foreign enemies combined, to date. But there may be something in technology that will transcend the age-old problems of loss and revision. Good backup systems have offsite storage requirements, so why not have offsite storage for Earth? And new search technologies will make it possible to get real usable information from the archived data. The major remaining task, to educate the people to think for themselves, and to have a level of curiosity to not accept the corporate line, will mostly be accomplished by expansion of current tools like an open Internet.
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Russell is correct of course, that all "history" as a practical matter is revisionist. One of my favorite absurdities is A. Lincoln - the erstwhile beloved of media pundits and neo-historians, who nonetheless killed more Americans than all foreign enemies combined, to date. But there may be something in technology that will transcend the age-old problems of loss and revision. Good backup systems have offsite storage requirements, so why not have offsite storage for Earth? And new search technologies will make it possible to get real usable information from the archived data. The major remaining task, to educate the people to think for themselves, and to have a level of curiosity to not accept the corporate line, will mostly be accomplished by expansion of current tools like an open Internet.
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Dale
I would like to be able to agree with you about educating people, but take a look at the following example. It is the foremost newspaper in Scotland, well-written and well regarded by most people there who can read.
It has a website and one might have imagined that the people posting on it would have something worth saying. Instead, you get the mouthings of lunatics, the mooings of highland cattle and not a lot more. To savour this, just take any political article listed in the home page, click on its blue title line and then scroll down to where the comments can be posted. And remember, one has to register to be able to post!
[a href=\"http://www.theherald.co.uk]http://www.theherald.co.uk[/url]
If that doesn´t ruin your hope of the web helping reality and/or truth hold their ground, then your optimism for the human race is much stronger than mine.
This is no joke: the newspaper is really worth its price. How, then, such a bunch of idiots on its back?
Rob C
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Dale
I would like to be able to agree with you about educating people, but take a look at the following......
http://www.theherald.co.uk (http://www.theherald.co.uk)
Rob C
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=203438\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Well, I've had a good opportunity to see how Big Media builds Reputation Capital, to use a phrase I found on an anarchist cryptographic forum. We can assume that the Scots as well as others have good protection against robotically generated postings of nonsense, and that the absurdities and fallacies broadcast on the official networks are understood for what they are by those who are paying attention, but don't bet on it. Think of all that as a war, and the winners will be those who keep their own files clean while dumping disinformation on everyone else. When you see the poisons people are putting into their bodies (fast food), you just imagine their brains filling up with the equivalent from media. People like Lewis Black, George Carlin and others have taken to shock performance to break through some of that crap, and even some of the ancient prophets were known for dangerous rantings. Our best bet I think is to network in reasonably intelligent forums like this one, and don't make the mistake of getting hung up on particulars - i.e. look for the patterns to see who's contributing and who's poisoning the air. Hint: The bad guys are often charming and popular.
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People like Lewis Black, George Carlin and others have taken to shock performance to break through some of that crap, and even some of the ancient prophets were known for dangerous rantings. Our best bet I think is to network in reasonably intelligent forums like this one, and don't make the mistake of getting hung up on particulars - i.e. look for the patterns to see who's contributing and who's poisoning the air. Hint: The bad guys are often charming and popular.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=203464\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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I haven´t knowledge of the two guys you quote, but I do recall that in the UK there were programmes such as That Was The Week That Was with David Frost etc. who did remarkable sketches on political figures of the time such as Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister. In America there was the Rowan and Martin Laugh In which, I seem to remember, was somewhat irreverent too. Later, things took a sour turn when puppets were introduced in shows like Spitting Image, where personal, physical factors were used to ridicule. I have never been one to enjoy laughing at cripples or the deformed; taking less than Hollywood faces and turning them into monsters is no show of worth - just cruelty and lack of real argument.
The thing is, those earlier shows managed to make their points without resorting to swearing or insulting people; yes, they surely pilloried them, but deservedly so.
I can´t say I have come across "bad guys" on this site: lots with whom I have a difference of opinion now and then, but not really anyone that I would not read. Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that most people here can write well enough to make their meaning clear enough to avoid too much misinterpretation. It always helps.
Ciao - Rob C
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Our best bet I think is to network in reasonably intelligent forums like this one, and don't make the mistake of getting hung up on particulars - i.e. look for the patterns to see who's contributing and who's poisoning the air. Hint: The bad guys are often charming and popular.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=203464\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Yep, I tend to agree that if hope there is it is probably to be found on the net.
The concern that you are raising I guess is that you still need to feed on some information source somewhere and the openess of the net and freedom to author content is also its weak point. "Who can we trust" being a lost cause and there is only "what can you trust" left.
I agree that our own ability to think straight is our most valuable asset, but I remain deeply troubled by the trends I see in some of the media I considered independant in some countries like France where the overall democratic discussion has been more vivid than in other geos.
Overall though, education of the masses (starting with myself obviously) is for sure a good direction and sites like www.ted.com provide tremendous opportunities to break the wall of pre-defined knowledge and canned messages and look in new ways at old issues.
Cheers,
Bernard
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In the USA, Infinity corp. and later Clearchannel corp. bought up most of the pop culture programs and talk shows, and then there's Fox network. I asked a number of young men who grew up during this era, who enjoyed shows like Beavis and Butthead, and Dumb and Dumber, about their political views. In a word, fascist. Which in Il Duce's words being the rule of corporations, fits perfectly with Fox, Clearchannel, and Infinity. Some of you folks out there may be believers in personal choice, but I find that the corporations are powerful persuaders, particularly when an all-gas car that got 62 mpg in 1988 now gets about 37 mpg today, in spite of the petrol crisis. We have met the enemy and they are us.
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In the USA, Infinity corp. and later Clearchannel corp. bought up most of the pop culture programs and talk shows, and then there's Fox network. I asked a number of young men who grew up during this era, who enjoyed shows like Beavis and Butthead, and Dumb and Dumber, about their political views. In a word, fascist. Which in Il Duce's words being the rule of corporations, fits perfectly with Fox, Clearchannel, and Infinity. Some of you folks out there may be believers in personal choice, but I find that the corporations are powerful persuaders, particularly when an all-gas car that got 62 mpg in 1988 now gets about 37 mpg today, in spite of the petrol crisis. We have met the enemy and they are us.
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Hey, he got the trains to run on time! And doing anything on time in southern Europe is a pretty cool achievement. Funny how the UK has become a part of the south in recent years...
I think that any government today is stuck in a hole. There has been such a history of bribing the masses to win the numbers to win the elections that the general good has been blown a long way back down the line. The real cynics are the politicians, all of whom, when in power, commit the same crimes of hubris and swilling from the public trough - a hard act to combine well, but they do it admirably. You see the Mugabe problem in what was Rhodesia, the bread basket of Africa, and you see the total lack of interest that it raises in its neighbouring states. Why? Because in one short leap of political freedom they have all jumped into bed with the same ethic that they see in the rest of the world, the only difference being that it was easier for them to do that where the population had far lower expectations.
The allusion to gasoline consumption may or may not be accurate - I just have no idea - but that´s only a tiny part of the oil problem. All the other things that are oil derivatives add up to make a huge total that even 100 mpg on a water engine can´t solve. Simply put, the world needs it (oil) as much as it does all the other things that go to make up civilized living. In fact, regardless of price, it will be gone one day. Then what? None of the oil billionaires will escape the consequences of that day any more than will the rest of us. Arabs included. Perhaps if we differentiate between the owners of the raw material in the ground, those who buy it as speculation at one price hoping to sell it on at a higher one just before they have to take delivery, and the petrol companies who make the fuel, then maybe the actual gas companies turn out to have been caught in the midle of a bidding war not of their making. As usual, there is always a bloody middle-man somewhere in the bushes. And, of course, a tax man raking in between 65% and 70% of the total take at the pump.
Corporations are not all that clever either. You need only look at the banks and the mess they are in and into which we have been dragged screaming too. That is not much of a sign of brilliant corporate power raping us all: it´s a sign of dumb and greedy people who have reached the same hubris level as the politicians of whom I wrote earlier. The logic of lending money to people that you know are bad risks because they don´t earn enough or are too shady to honour debt escapes me. Hardly corporation superpowers, then!
In the end, that guy in the movie industry who proclaimed "in this business nobody knows anything," might have been speaking for all of us everywhere. In that sense, you are on the money: we are all to blame in one way or another and we are indeed the enemy.
Rob C
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Mugabe. Now there's a politico's politico. My head is spinning so fast I'm going to have to take a leave. If we were really smart, we'd get over there and start a book project for the opposition guy, while he's still in shape to dictate (!) his recollections of the late campaign. The story wouldn't matter much - be more interesting and "controversial" if we just made it up. I know I'm being cynical now, but hey, these things are why people join the military intel services. Why report the news when you can make it up? Didn't H.G. Wells and several other writers work for govt. information services? Forgive the reference to everyone's favorite black hole of history, but according to a reliable source, the primary author of the Warren Report (actually the Report of the President's Commission) was Otto Winnacker(sp?), who in the early 1940's had worked as a German historian. Who knew?
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Mugabe. Now there's a politico's politico. My head is spinning so fast I'm going to have to take a leave. If we were really smart, we'd get over there and start a book project for the opposition guy, while he's still in shape to dictate (!) his recollections of the late campaign. The story wouldn't matter much - be more interesting and "controversial" if we just made it up. I know I'm being cynical now, but hey, these things are why people join the military intel services. Why report the news when you can make it up? Didn't H.G. Wells and several other writers work for govt. information services? Forgive the reference to everyone's favorite black hole of history, but according to a reliable source, the primary author of the Warren Report (actually the Report of the President's Commission) was Otto Winnacker(sp?), who in the early 1940's had worked as a German historian. Who knew?
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Dale, why bother going over there? Central Casting can supply all the actors and probably all the costumes you´d need to tell the story. Save on carbon footprints, too, allowing you the moral highground.
Rob C
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Dale, why bother going over there? Central Casting can supply all the actors and probably all the costumes you´d need to tell the story. Save on carbon footprints, too, allowing you the moral highground.
Rob C
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Well, I saw the movie Wag The Dog a few years back, and it made me squirm in my seat a few times, between laughing fits. Years before that, I think it was called Network News or some such thing. These are supposed to be over-the-top satire, yet, either nobody watched them, nobody "got it", or TV is so mesmerizing that (like rich food that's bad for you) nobody can help themselves and we keep taking the bait. Perhaps in your case or mine, we will not have our personal art turned into a mockery by commercial fame, since there are larger targets to be bought and sold. Still, we expect there to be standards of quality, achievement, or (gasp) truth separate from the McArt world of TV advertising, so future gen's can go to the art & culture museum and see for themselves. Maybe we should be having roundtables on the topic of how to design such a museum, and how to promote an alternative to the corporate vision. Maybe the word *museum* is inappropriate for this, or how such museums are being run today. And funding is the bottom line, eh?