If you believe some interpretations of the Mayan calendar, 2012 is to be our last year on the planet. It’s been a good run; but frankly, we at DarkroomPro Magazine aren’t quite ready to pack it in just yet. All this talk of our impending doom however, got us thinking about which elements of our current culture would be preserved for posterity in that event, (I suppose for curious aliens as they pick through the charred remains of our civilization).
Digital Demise
When you think about how history has been recorded since the inception of the art with Herodotus, you realize that many of the nuances that breathe life into the narrative come not from the broad strokes that describe events and major personalities, but from individual accounts and personal relics that much more ably confer upon the reader a true sense of zeitgeist.
Let’s say for the sake of argument, the apocalypse, as some have suggested, comes at the hands of a technological meltdown generated due to the shifting of Earth’s magnetic field. All computers and devices that have their base in magnetism (pretty much everything) cease to function, and mankind, unable to cope, is practically wiped out. What will our hypothetical alien visitors find when going over tangible artifacts from the ‘Information Age’?: ironically, a lack of information.
The Black Hole
Today, in the business world, while more paper is generated than ever in our so-called ‘paperless’ offices, it’s typically a transitional medium, rapidly discarded and run through the shredder for recycling. Hard copies of documents are printed on-demand as they occupy significantly less space residing on a hard drive than filed away in a cabinet. This strategy is also being increasingly adopted by the public sector where archivists are more frequently turning to the digital realm for solutions to their storage problems.
In the home on the other hand, the vast majority of letters, photographs, emails etc., are rarely, if ever printed. They reside, tucked away on a range of removable media, hard drives, digital picture frames, and even smart phones. In our apocalyptic scenario, this vast trove of data would simply be inaccessible; and what did remain would provide a woefully inadequate picture of the past two decades.
Who Cares?
Of course, as stated above, we don’t subscribe to the theory that the Mayan calendar contains symbols prophetic of our doom, and even if we did, we’ll be gone, so who gives a rat’s patootie? Why are we even talking about it?
Of course our concern doesn’t stem from our desire to leave an accurate account for alien archaeologists to parse, but those of our future generations; and few mediums confer as much information in a format as compact and long-lived as the printed photograph.
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Since the dawn of time, man has sought insulation from mortality by way of passing knowledge, experience, and tradition from one generation to the next. At first the oral record was all we had to work with; and as anyone who has played a game of broken telephone knows, that’s not exactly the best way to ensure information fidelity. Since the invention of the written word however, preservation of history has seen vast improvements.
Problems still plague historians today however. Besides the multitude of languages (some such as that of the Indus Valley still indecipherable) encountered, the medium upon which they were laid down also changed, and were subject to their own preservation challenges. We moved from stone tablets, to clay, papyrus, vellum, and eventually mass dissemination of the written word was enabled by Gutenberg’s masterpiece, the printing press: probably the most significant invention of all time.
This format shifting has always been the cause of significant data loss, but has been particularly prevalent over the past century. How many of you still have access to floppy drives… VCRs… cassette recorders… record players? Got any players for wax cylinders kicking around the basement? With each new format shift, a little bit of our culture is lost. Think the ‘cloud’ is going to preserve your digital contributions forever? Think again.
The advent of the digital age has been a harbinger of doom for many once highly profitable business models — though few markets have seen such substantial amounts of technology-driven flux as the photographic industry. Scant years ago, there were over 4000 Fotomats in the United States alone, offering next-day film processing services and providing consumers with a retail channel for all their photography related consumables. These were relegated to the dustbin of history when 1 hour processing outlets became ubiquitous. Now, these are also in decline; as apparently 1 hour is far too long to wait when you could do just as well or better on your own printer.
The problem is, for the vast majority of folks, images now tend to be trapped within their PCs — typically located in the digital equivalent to an enormous shoe-box of disarray. Photos are seldom printed, and as a result, are most likely to be consigned to the binary graveyard, given the usual state of affairs: lax attention to backup, equipment failures, disorganization, and lack of awareness of the collection’s existence or location on the part of one’s heirs.
Why Bother?
Ok, so maybe you still don’t care about your photographic legacy. Nonetheless, we definitely encourage our readers to take the time to properly process and print their best photographs. Not only does it enhance the chances for their preservation, but it actually helps people become better photographers. How? Well for starters, selecting images for printing makes you really stop and think about the relative quality of one photo over another — as obviously you aren’t going to print them all.
In the digital age, clicking the shutter doesn’t have a perceived up-front cost. However, the back-end costs in terms of time addressing the sheer volume which results from that initial perception lead to having to deal with significant quantities of photographic drek, which, upon consideration of print-worthiness, would otherwise be deleted. As one’s eye becomes more accustomed to identifying the gems amidst the refuse, they are more able to frame those types of images within the viewfinder in the first place.
So, do your decedents and yourself a favour: print out your best photos! Who knows; if the rantings of the lunatic fringe turn out to be correct, one of your images may eventually find itself hanging on a starship’s wall!