[toomanybeersies]

It's the same with photographs. We take more photos than ever before, but we lose more photos than ever before.

iCloud is not archival or long term storage, people lose access, or accidentally delete photos or whatever. Meanwhile, all my childhood photos are safely stored as negatives. Of course, my parents' house could burn down and all my childhood photos could be lost, but that's unlikely.

That's one reason that I've been enjoying film photography. I know that my negatives will easily last 50+ years if stored with some care.

We really need a solution for long term file storage for the average person. I plan on putting my digital photos onto archival DVDs at some point and storing them with my negatives. But even archival DVDs have problems, namely that it assumes we'll have DVD readers in 50 years. Meanwhile, we'll still be able to scan photographic negatives in 50 years, and to circle back to books, we'll be able to read books in 50 years.