Are we really "doomed to delete history" because of the changes from paper to digital formats? I don't know that I'd take such a pessimistic view on things. Whereas it may be true that fewer people handwrite letters these days than in those gone by and that fewer photographs are being printed from their digital formats, let's think about this for a minute.
First, how many awful photographs did you once pay to have processed before the advent of digital photography? I know I've tossed about a ton of badly-framed, blurry, and just plain boring/ugly shots. So perhaps it's a good thing that we're not wasting resources on bad photos anymore.
As for writing letters - I, for one, still receive lots of cards. Hallmark doesn't seem to be going anywhere. We know the government has our email under surveillance - maybe they'll save the juicy ones for history (cynical, maybe; pessimistic, no). And frankly, how much of our daily email would you really want to preserve? We're still capable of making paper copies of important documents so this is hardly a cause for alarm.
One thing the writer has failed to consider is how easy it is for digital files to proliferate. It's much simpler to copy and archive a file than it is to dub and store a videocassette. And part of the reason to digitize is to prevent the loss of the past, not speed things up. Take the Internet Archive, for example. If they hadn't taken the time to digitize the over 2,000 films in the Prelinger Archives, those films would have eventually disintegrated and disappeared forever. Or how about these blues and gospel recordings over at the Library of Congress, dating from 1938-1943? Thanks to digitization, not only do things like this continue to be safely preserved for the future, they find new life among the living through their availability online.
Consider how much of the past is being digitized and put online by organizations around the world every day and you'll have to agree that history is more at our fingertips than ever before. But we must stay vigilant about preserving what's important by making sure those things get translated into the new formats. Migration is the key to keeping the past.
