J wrote:

"Gordon Moat" wrote in message
...
Imaging formats change all the time. I would imagine some really early
video
might be entirely unreadable at some point in the near future.

These video formats are analog and require a specific mechanical device to
read. Reproduction of that mechanical device may be difficult. However, if
they are lucky someone digitized it and it exists somewhere. They have
services which do this sort of thing you know.

Yes, I am well aware of those services. There are few that are low cost. I also
wonder if there is enough business for anyone to offer that service in the
future. Just because something is possible, does not mean some company will do
it. Now if it is profitable, then some company might do it.



JPEG is already slated for changes.

So, you can still read GIF files and other "obsolete" types. Why should jpeg
die just because it is changed in the future?

Because it could not be easily read or translated. In other words, the factor
is cost of conversion. How many people will bother to convert old formats,
especially when they are not even sure what might be on the files. How many
people even use a data recovery service, and at what expense?



MPEG is also an evolving standard. TIFF is somewhat stable,
though there was a variation that Adobe used once that caused some
problems.

All these engineers trying to do more will continue to evolve file
formats.
Software of the future might not be able to read older files. While
something
on the internet might still be found, even through some like the web
archive
organization, the reality is that usually someone needs to pay to keep
information on any server.

My point is that given the spec, and given typical programming tools you can
read the bits that the file is encoded with. Reading a bitmap or a jpeg is
unlikely to become a lost art. Binary data is here to stay and it is easy to
work with it. It has the advantage that you can read it and duplicate it
exactly. This frees you in principle from relying on obsolete, no longer
readable media - as long as someone wants to keep it, it is easy for them to
do so.

I should have mentioned the cost aspect in my earlier post. If standards are
already great, then why do engineers continue changing them . . . but anyway,
your basic premise is true, and binary data is binary data. Why did some people
get paid so much for data conversion prior to 2000, when it was realized that
quite a bit of old data was in formats that were no longer in use. Those old
formats were binary as well, but there was so much of it, conversion was not
fast, easy, or low cost.

Who will pay to convert old files, especially old image files where they cannot
know what the images are on them? How much will they pay to find out what those
images were? My opinion on this is that few people will convert their old
files, and there will not be conversion software automatically available, nor
even free downloads of something that will work.

Certainly there will be stuff that no one keeps. There always is. The
majority of paperbacks from the 50's, 60's and 70's have all gone into the
trash. No one is crying over them or saying that paper is obsolete. Where
are the mountains of vinyl records that were produced throughout the last
century? 8 track tapes? Prints from instamatic cameras? glass plates? The
libraries at Alexandria? Most everything is in huge landfills now. And
people were happy to put it there.

Cultural aspects . . . happens all the time. Take a look at the images and
words we do have of the past, and you soon realize that they are all small
slices of the past. That we can appreciate them easily, shows the simplicity of
being able to view (or read) them with little aid of modern technology.



Obviously some more important information will survive. Family histories
are
another thing, and it would not surprise me to hear of many losses in the
future. What is the incentive to keep things the same as they are
digitally
now?


The sky, it is falling.

Right . . . save all your family photos as JPEGs, and burn them to CD-R. Enjoy
them all in twenty years . . . ever try to open a native PhotoShop 2.0 file?
Hey, I am not any kind of prophet . . . so if you are comfortable with
technology, and the way you are using it, then ignore what I say.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com