Flaw in T. Phillips "Digital is not photography" argument

Leaving aside any of the philosophical and semantic aspects of his argument,
there's one glaring error in his argument. He asserts that because digital
formats change (true) that digital images made now will become unreadable in
the future.

Now, if one is discussing images made on physical media (film), there *is* the
distinct possibility that the image will be rendered unusable through time
because of physical degradation of the image. (Witness movies on nitrate stock
and color negatives or slides with unstable dyes.)

And in the case of digital media, there is always the possibility that the
image will become unreadable because of *physical* degradation of the media
(tape, magnetic disc, optical disc, etc.)

However, assuming that the *physical media* remains intact, it is very, very
unlikely that any digitally-recorded image will ever become unreadable in the
future.

I do know something about this, having worked for a computer media conversion
and duplication company for 13 years. In that one small company alone, there
exists the ability to read many obsolete digital formats (meaning both the
equuipment and the software to decipher the data and deliver it in a usable
form): specifically, 9-track tape (remember the old movies with the computers
with the spinning tape drives?) and floppy disks, including the old 8" monsters.

I'm confident that even data on paper tape could be read; someone, somewhere,
has a paper-tape reader connected to his S-100 system (running CP/M), or some
other moldy oldie. And if not, a reader could pretty easily be cobbled together.

The point is that humanity doesn't collectively forget its own obsolete
recording formats, just because something new comes along. Sure, the old
formats fall into disuse and become difficult to use, but not impossible.

Why, in this very house, I can right now play 78 rpm records if I like, or 45s
even. I can also read all of my old 5-1/4" floppies on my computer.

I'd like someone to try to name a data storage format (either physical medium
or data format) that they think cannot be read today.


--
Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a
really easy way: stop participating in it.

- Noam Chomsky

"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
...
Leaving aside any of the philosophical and semantic
aspects of his argument, there's one glaring error in his
argument. He asserts that because digital formats change
(true) that digital images made now will become unreadable
in the future.

Now, if one is discussing images made on physical media
(film), there *is* the distinct possibility that the image
will be rendered unusable through time because of physical
degradation of the image. (Witness movies on nitrate stock
and color negatives or slides with unstable dyes.)

And in the case of digital media, there is always the
possibility that the image will become unreadable because
of *physical* degradation of the media (tape, magnetic
disc, optical disc, etc.)

However, assuming that the *physical media* remains
intact, it is very, very unlikely that any
digitally-recorded image will ever become unreadable in
the future.

I do know something about this, having worked for a
computer media conversion and duplication company for 13
years. In that one small company alone, there exists the
ability to read many obsolete digital formats (meaning
both the equuipment and the software to decipher the data
and deliver it in a usable form): specifically, 9-track
tape (remember the old movies with the computers with the
spinning tape drives?) and floppy disks, including the old
8" monsters.

I'm confident that even data on paper tape could be read;
someone, somewhere, has a paper-tape reader connected to
his S-100 system (running CP/M), or some other moldy
oldie. And if not, a reader could pretty easily be cobbled
together.

The point is that humanity doesn't collectively forget its
own obsolete recording formats, just because something new
comes along. Sure, the old formats fall into disuse and
become difficult to use, but not impossible.

Why, in this very house, I can right now play 78 rpm
records if I like, or 45s even. I can also read all of my
old 5-1/4" floppies on my computer.

I'd like someone to try to name a data storage format
(either physical medium or data format) that they think
cannot be read today.


The oldest media you are dealing with is probably the 9
track data recordings. How old are they? probably not more
than about forty years, if that. In order to read them you
need to have the transport, heads that match the format, and
know what the format is. This is quite different from
"reading" still photographs, which requires no equipment
other than the eye, even for negatives. Motion pictures are
more difficult if one requires reproducing the motion but
the subject matter is also visiblel to the eye with no help
(other than perhaps a magnifyer). Also viewer and projector
technology has not changed fundamentally in over a century
and is still used.
More difficult will be the recovery of data from formats
as common as floppy discs. It will probably be possible but
will require the construction of suitable reproducers. While
a floppy drive is very cheap now it won't be when they are
no longer made and must be constructed as a single specialty
item.
The fact is that recovery of archived material on
photographic film requires little specialized equipment
while digital data will always require a lot of specialized
equipment.
It is difficult to predict the future of technology.
Usually, predictions are based on extrapolating from current
technology but there is no way to predict a "break through"
based on new scientific discovery. Science and technology
are different in a very fundamental way: science is the
discovery of natural laws or principles; technology is the
application of known laws or principles. It is also possible
that computer technology will eventually reach some sort of
equilibrium. It is still a new art (IMHO) which means it is
changeing rapidly, but that rate of change may itself change
in the future. Here again is an unpredictible factor because
we don't know what discoveries may be made which may
accelerate change.
Certainly digital archiving will become more reliable in
the future because it has to in order to be useful.
Other forms of electronic storage than digital have also
suffered from rapid change in technology. When I started in
the TV business 2 inch segmented scan video tape recorders
were common. Now they are found only in specialty dub houses
for the purpose of recovering material recorded on that
format. The example of a 78 disc is trivial. Cylinder
recordings are perhaps a more apt example of old technology
which yields recoverable data but cylinder recordings were
never used for long and are comparitively few against disc
recordings.
Now, having said all this basically I disagree with the
original premise that electonic images are not photography.
They obviously are despite any argument about longevity.


--
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA

On 10/16/2004 1:51 PM Richard Knoppow spake thus:

"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
...
Leaving aside any of the philosophical and semantic
aspects of his argument, there's one glaring error in his
argument. He asserts that because digital formats change
(true) that digital images made now will become unreadable
in the future.

[...]

However, assuming that the *physical media* remains
intact, it is very, very unlikely that any
digitally-recorded image will ever become unreadable in
the future.

The oldest media you are dealing with is probably the 9
track data recordings. How old are they? probably not more
than about forty years, if that. In order to read them you
need to have the transport, heads that match the format, and
know what the format is. This is quite different from
"reading" still photographs, which requires no equipment
other than the eye, even for negatives. Motion pictures are
more difficult if one requires reproducing the motion but
the subject matter is also visiblel to the eye with no help
(other than perhaps a magnifyer). Also viewer and projector
technology has not changed fundamentally in over a century
and is still used.
More difficult will be the recovery of data from formats
as common as floppy discs. It will probably be possible but
will require the construction of suitable reproducers. While
a floppy drive is very cheap now it won't be when they are
no longer made and must be constructed as a single specialty
item.
The fact is that recovery of archived material on
photographic film requires little specialized equipment
while digital data will always require a lot of specialized
equipment.

[more good stuff snipped]

Everything you say is so; my point was simply that it will undoubtedly be
possible to read digital images, even from obsolete media and formats, in the
future. You pointed out that it may be difficult to do so, which is true. But
it will still be possile.


--
Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a
really easy way: stop participating in it.

- Noam Chomsky

David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 10/16/2004 1:51 PM Richard Knoppow spake thus:

The fact is that recovery of archived material on
photographic film requires little specialized equipment
while digital data will always require a lot of specialized
equipment.

[more good stuff snipped]

Everything you say is so; my point was simply that it will undoubtedly be
possible to read digital images, even from obsolete media and formats, in
the future. You pointed out that it may be difficult to do so, which is
true. But it will still be possile.




Sure but if it's going to cost hundreds of bucks per image to recover them,
how many will be recovered?

BTW I have some paper tapes from a 1970's wang machine, know someone who can
read them for the same cost as looking at the photo's I took at the same
time? :-)
--

Stacey

David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 10/16/2004 1:51 PM Richard Knoppow spake thus:

[more good stuff snipped]

Everything else snipped as it deserves to be...

Everything you say is so; my point was simply that it will undoubtedly be
possible to read digital images, even from obsolete media and formats, in the
future. You pointed out that it may be difficult to do so, which is true. But
it will still be possile.

I think your point must be to gain gratification by crossposting
so as to take an ongoing multithread dicussion in one nsg group
and limiting it's context in your favor in another nsg.

Welcome to the killfile david...

NASA, with multi-million dollar budgets, couldn't recover much of the data
they had stored on tape from the early space probes (Ranger..). So a bunch
of rocket scientists, with all the $$ and support engineers and software
geeks in NASA, can't recover their own digital tapes 30 years on, right?!
Doesn't say much for our odds for recovery 50 or 100 years from now? ;-)

The first reason most digital images are going to be lost is that most
such images are not recorded on permanent storage media in the first
place. By most, I mean 63%, as found in a digital camera user survey by
Fuji-UK (see BJP PROFESSIONAL NEWS - 21 May 2003 for details), where most
users had images stored on their computer hard drives -with no backups!

Second, most of the remaining images are not going to be properly managed,
meaning they won't be recopied every year or two, or converted to new
formats etc. Like most photographs of the past, those CDRs are going to
end up in a shoebox in a hot attic, and chemical "bit-rot" will make them
unreadable in a decade or less. Magnetic "bit-rot" kills off that form of
storage media quickly too. These losses can be catastrophic in many image
formats using compression, where most of the image is encoded as offsets
from an initial value. Even worse are images with encrypted or protected
or enbedded features. We already have "data archeologists" (seriously) who
specialize in excavating data from older corporate databases and resources

Third, for the few % of images that are recorded on "archival media",
failure to strictly maintain temperature and especially non-exposure to UV
will mean far shorter lives than claimed in the ads. And you may have
noticed that a number of so-called "archival" CD products (e.g., Kodak..)
have been withdrawn or recharacterized for longevity, yes? ;-) This is a
really big deal for digital librarians and others in the data storage biz.
Film remains the only proven archival image storage media today...

Fourth, the number of proprietary formats continues to explode in number
(e.g., raw data), with lots of "streaming" updates in software upgrades
added to products. The number of incompatible file compression formats is
also quite large. The number of operating system variables are large (cf.
XP vs. MS-DOS etc. ;-). And lots of those software programs have bugs and
"features" which may prove critical to recovering or reconstructing the
original data decades from now. So, how many of us have recorded all this
information with our CDs, so we could reconstruct the creation environment
say fifty years from now? None, right? ;-)

Fifth, your experience as a data conversion company worker is different
from mine. I "inherited" a nifty heathkit version of a DEC minicomputer,
complete with software and 8" diskettes etc. The original owner had spent
years searching online and with our campus archivists and librarians for a
service that could convert her original dissertation notes and resources
off the 8" diskettes in some odd freeware word processor format to
MS-WORD. Nobody could do it. Not even the heath user group folks could
help her out That was less than 20 years old hardware and software too,
rather less than 100 years, eh? ;-)

What does Fuji-UK recommend? They suggest that if you have something you
really want to be sure is available archivally decades from now, you
should get it on FILM (!) :-0) Makes sense, since film is a direct access
medium (no computer hardware or software required) with proven archival
potentials (with proper fixing etc.). And the US government continues to
mandate COM (microfilm) as their archival medium of choice etc.

The sad part here is that the very vast majority of digital images being
made by regular people will be lost, not in a century, but at the next
hard drive failure or virus attack (63%..), most "archived" CDROM images
will deteriorate from chemical "bit-rot" in the next decade or so etc.

Just as parents are upset to discover that their VHS tapes of their kids
can't be viewed at the kid's graduation from High School, so to are most
of today's digital users likely to be disappointed that their digital
images are lost over the same double decade time period.

In the meantime, lots of us will be glad we were shooting on film in the
first place ;-)

my $.02 ;-)
bobm
--
************************************************** *********************
* Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 *
********************Standard Disclaimers Apply*************************

Bob Monaghan wrote:



The sad part here is that the very vast majority of digital images being
made by regular people will be lost, not in a century, but at the next
hard drive failure or virus attack (63%..), most "archived" CDROM images
will deteriorate from chemical "bit-rot" in the next decade or so etc.


I don't even work in the computer industry but have witnessed this first
hand at least a dozen times. People store their digital images on the same
partition as their windows install! They pop in the restore disk that came
with their computer and are shocked all their childen's pictures are gone.
And of course they never printed any of them so they are GONE.

Of course with enough diligence this can be avoided but how many people are
going to take on the active -fight- of keeping all their images safe? I'd
bet less than 5% of digital camera users will.
--

Stacey

On 17 Oct 2004 17:53:34 -0500, (Bob Monaghan)
wrote:

big snip

In the meantime, lots of us will be glad we were shooting on film in the
first place ;-)


Some good points, bob, but what in particular
do they have to do with MF photography or the
original topic of this thread?

Agreed, lots of folks now shooting digicams
will be in for a rude surprise somewhere down
the line. They will either learn from that
experience.. or not. By definition most of
those who lose data will be casual users.

In the meantime, I feel I'm pretty well
covered - shooting mostly with film and
printing digitally.

On images captured digitally, I need to be
super vigilant. Yes, I've already lost a few
images. I'm not looking backwards -- just
can't see any point in doing that.

Yes, it's good to be reminded of the
volatility of digital data. Even so, I'm
sure the storage technologies will continue
to improve rapidly. Four years ago a 100 MB
Zip disk was the standard, at $10 a pop.
In 2004 it's a DVD, with 47 times more
storage at 1/10 the cost.

Can you cite evidence that present CDs
and DVDs are subject to magnetic "bit rot?"
I believe you are mistaken on that point.


rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com

Agreed, lots of folks now shooting digicams
will be in for a rude surprise somewhere down
the line.

True, just as so many families had a rude surprise when they saw their color
photographs from the '70s and earlier fading and discoloring beyond
recognition ("and why oh why didn't we keep all those negatives somewhere so
that we could find them today?").

"rafe bustin" wrote in message
...
On 17 Oct 2004 17:53:34 -0500, (Bob Monaghan)
wrote:

big snip

In the meantime, lots of us will be glad we were shooting on film in the
first place ;-)


Some good points, bob, but what in particular
do they have to do with MF photography or the
original topic of this thread?

Agreed, lots of folks now shooting digicams
will be in for a rude surprise somewhere down
the line. They will either learn from that
experience.. or not. By definition most of
those who lose data will be casual users.

In the meantime, I feel I'm pretty well
covered - shooting mostly with film and
printing digitally.

On images captured digitally, I need to be
super vigilant. Yes, I've already lost a few
images. I'm not looking backwards -- just
can't see any point in doing that.

Yes, it's good to be reminded of the
volatility of digital data. Even so, I'm
sure the storage technologies will continue
to improve rapidly. Four years ago a 100 MB
Zip disk was the standard, at $10 a pop.
In 2004 it's a DVD, with 47 times more
storage at 1/10 the cost.

Can you cite evidence that present CDs
and DVDs are subject to magnetic "bit rot?"
I believe you are mistaken on that point.


rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com

Agreed, lots of folks now shooting digicams
will be in for a rude surprise somewhere down
the line.

True, just as so many families had a rude surprise when they saw their color
photographs from the '70s and earlier fading and discoloring beyond
recognition ("and why oh why didn't we keep all those negatives somewhere so
that we could find them today?").

"rafe bustin" wrote in message
...
On 17 Oct 2004 17:53:34 -0500, (Bob Monaghan)
wrote:

big snip

In the meantime, lots of us will be glad we were shooting on film in the
first place ;-)


Some good points, bob, but what in particular
do they have to do with MF photography or the
original topic of this thread?

Agreed, lots of folks now shooting digicams
will be in for a rude surprise somewhere down
the line. They will either learn from that
experience.. or not. By definition most of
those who lose data will be casual users.

In the meantime, I feel I'm pretty well
covered - shooting mostly with film and
printing digitally.

On images captured digitally, I need to be
super vigilant. Yes, I've already lost a few
images. I'm not looking backwards -- just
can't see any point in doing that.

Yes, it's good to be reminded of the
volatility of digital data. Even so, I'm
sure the storage technologies will continue
to improve rapidly. Four years ago a 100 MB
Zip disk was the standard, at $10 a pop.
In 2004 it's a DVD, with 47 times more
storage at 1/10 the cost.

Can you cite evidence that present CDs
and DVDs are subject to magnetic "bit rot?"
I believe you are mistaken on that point.


rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com