I finished stuffing my last batch of printed photos into my 2025 photo album yesterday.
See My (lame?) Family Photo Backup Process.
Anyway, I was thinking that I only print a fraction of the photos taken. The rest are essentially lost, or will be with time.
This applies to most people, e.g. most families that take hundreds/thousands of photos every year.
So many photos/memories are lost.
Now imagine archaeologists/sociologists/anthropologists in 1,000+ years. They would give anything to access middens of these “lost” photos. These candied yet rejected snapshots of places/times/people.
When we die, these photos are lost. We take them for ourselves. The kids probably don’t want them. The printed albums will end up in landfill in a generation or two.
Imagine if we could donate/will all digital media (photos/videos) to a company/non-profit that made them available under a permissive licence, perhaps after a time lag to allow people in them to also pass on. Or not. And perhaps with a filter to strip out anything too NSFW.
The systems could be backed by clever “Internet Archive” like systems. Maybe it could be a service offered by the Internet Archive. Gee, tech millionaires/billionaires should all donate to them as a matter of course, it’s such an important thing they are doing.
Anyway, this is needed.
Send in a phone/workstation with a form on filtering/delays and have people at the other end process and upload. It has to be insanely easy and appropriately protective of peoples wishes.
What is this? “Digital Estate Planning”?
How could the photos be used (for good)?
Who knows? Same with how can the internet archive be used for good in the short/medium? Train AIs? Anthropological reconstructions? We find clever/creative/invaluable uses.