TODAY’S POLL

LAST POLL RESULTS

39.4% of you voted A mix of digital collections and printed photo books/albums in Friday’s poll: How do you think people will share and preserve personal photos and memories for future generations?

“I can hope!?!”

“That’s the way I do it.”

“At my age, I prefer printed media, but those who know me are more into the digital age. Some will copy photo albums to their photo apps, while others will want to retain the albums in their current form.”

“I’m writing a book about my life — with pictures and weekly prompts from the publisher — for my 2 daughters, who will one day pass it on to my 2 grandsons.”

“Nobody is going to rummage through a phone, but they might look through printed snapshots.”

“Printed photos are still the best! Holding a photograph will never be replaced by cloud storage. I love Fujifilm instant cameras!”

“I love printed photos, but I admit digital ones are far easier to access and show off. The downside of printed photos is that they generally fade.”

“I LOVE MY OLD PHOTOS AND NEW ONES ARE DIGITAL.”

“Even though it will be a mix, I think people will stop keeping photos in albums. Eventually, everyone will have everything stored in the cloud.”

“I think future generations will print very few photos, and that it will all be digital, whether it’s stored in the cloud, digital libraries, or on social media platforms. Physical photos are pretty much history, sorry to say.”

“I think in today’s world, we rely on phones and cloud storage.”

“I’m middle-aged. If you had asked me this question earlier in life, I would have said photo albums. Technology is constantly evolving, so I’m sure something will eventually replace digital and cloud platforms.”

“I don’t think cloud storage is shared the way images are on social media. What happens to our cloud-stored photos when we die? Who can access them, and will anyone bother?”

“Digital storage is quite unsafe. I’ve lost a lot of images due to hackers. If I had saved those images another way, I’d still have them.”

“I didn’t back up 20 years of my life at all, so it only exists on Facebook. Now, I back everything up to hard drives every 3 months.”

“As MySpace and Friendster have demonstrated, nothing is permanent. Today’s social media platforms may seem to be ‘eternal,’ but they will need extensive maintenance over time to evade bit rot. I have worked with maintaining government document resources for library collections and have seen various forms of documentation come and go.”

“With all the billions of terrible phone photos mixed in with their AI-slop counterparts, I just don’t think anyone will give two craps about 99.999% of those images in the future. After a single generation, they’ll all become extinct — hopefully. My 2¢.”

“Sadly, I think too many will be lost in cyberspace — forever unretrievable. We’re cleaning out my grandmother’s house and finding 75- to 100-year-old pictures. I don’t think future generations will have that pleasure.”

“I could have picked a couple of other answers, but with social media using our pictures without our consent, and sadly not having paper photos any longer without having to pick out hundreds and send them to a photo book company, I’m not really sure how they will be preserved.”

“Telepathy.”

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