These personal memories already are often not valued by children and grandchildren. A lot of photos, diapositives and super-8 or hi8 films end being disposed every day after someone dies. And there is no museum or collector interested in conserving them either. So, there is no guarantee that physical media endures time.
I'd even argue that todays digital photos and videos capturing a "greater value for society" are more likely to survive because they are often already archived and published on the web.
Todays normal users are taking way too much (bad) photos and selfies nobody will be interested in in 10 months, much less in 10 or 100 years. Some pictures might be worth posting to Flickr or Facebook, but they don't have enough longtime importance to make physical prints from them. And most likely my children after my death won't browse in excitement through the 454 photos I've taken with my phone on my latest trip to New York, nor the tens of thousands of pictures rotting on my hard drive.
>Todays normal users are taking way too much (bad) photos and selfies nobody will be interested in in 10 months, much less in 10 or 100 years. Some pictures might be worth posting to Flickr or Facebook, but they don't have enough longtime importance to make physical prints from them.
Who gets to decide what should be saved? Who gets to decide historical worth? My guess would be archaeologists and historians, and how do you know what will be interesting or useful to them 100s of years in the future?
> Who gets to decide what should be saved? Who gets to decide historical worth?
Even if someone tries to decide what should be saved or what might be worth something, it's really hard to figure out what will be rare/unknown in the future -- if you can figure that out, you can probably make a fortune hoarding something like Beanie Babies to resell down the road.
There's a collection of random snapshots that someone took in a mall in the early 90s [1] that pops up on imgur and reddit every now and then. They were originally taken to compare malls across America, but now they're actually interesting from a cultural/historical perspective.
I'd even argue that todays digital photos and videos capturing a "greater value for society" are more likely to survive because they are often already archived and published on the web.
Todays normal users are taking way too much (bad) photos and selfies nobody will be interested in in 10 months, much less in 10 or 100 years. Some pictures might be worth posting to Flickr or Facebook, but they don't have enough longtime importance to make physical prints from them. And most likely my children after my death won't browse in excitement through the 454 photos I've taken with my phone on my latest trip to New York, nor the tens of thousands of pictures rotting on my hard drive.