Resurrecting the Digital

ANYONE WHO VISITS ME knows I have secret banker's boxes containing digital refugees. Inside those boxes sit CDs cut once, read one. I've 3.5" floppies containing the family history. In a fireproof case, there are 5 1/4" floppies with some of my original Word work. And every week, I open and try to reclaim some of those digital archives. I really wish I had a strategy that would guarantee what I'm saving could be opened by our daughter in 30 years' time. For very important items, I'm saving PDF/A (enclosing the fonts), RDF and TXT options. I've made JPG, GIF and PNG files into MPEG movies and DVD clips that play as slideshows on our television. The most precious things on Flickr have become hard copy books in our sitting room as well as slideshows on a removeable drive connected to our personal media server. I have first words saved raw in Sony's MSV format (recorded on the ICD MX-20 at left) and converted to MP3 then CDA that play on everything in the house. Finally, I'm buying a serious amount of online space with PutPlace.com and Blacknight.com where an online treasure trove will survive for at least 30 years when my daughter can decide whether she wants to keep paying for the online space. If she does, she'll know that her first steps will remain in the cloud, not be dust-covered in the attic.

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