Eventually everything and everyone we have ever known will be lost to time.

That’s a good thing.

A drop in the bucket compared to those that were never taken at all in the last 4,000 years of civilization before the picture boxes came to be.

So?

Eventually every single one.

but the Oh So Magical Boxes will surely keep them safe! I have no clues how it works but thats its job so it better be doing it, or else I’ll buy the next model from the same brand sooner! I don’t need to think about it! look it says its even waterproof so I’ll bring it with me into the salty sea! it is also in my Cloud™, so what could go wrong! living the Hi Life, comfy life FTW!

Around a year ago, my dad went on a fishing trip with a friend, and his kayak flipped over due to how turbulent the conditions were, and due to that he lost his phone (which was in a waterproof pouch) in the ocean, which had likely multiple thousand family photos that weren’t backed up at all. The friend he was with decided to go diving in that area to try find it, but never did despite how calm the water had been after that incident.

Now he backs his photos up from his new phone to Google drive, however I’m not sure whether he’s actually checked if it’s syncing or not.

Before digital? Millions. After digital? Possibly trillions? All those photos backed up to the “the cloud” make great training data, though!

Not sure thats a bad thing. The older I get the more I want to go out a ghost.

Immich

Probably less than the moments that are lost in time before the invention of the digital camera.

I’ve thought about getting my photos transferred to archival microfilm before, but backups on a usb hard drive, my own personal server, and a cloud service should do for now XD

when my wife died, i was 32. the kids were 7, 8, and 10. there are tons of physical pics. but looking back at pics from almost 20 years ago now… sure i am gonna send each kid a usb key but… if i lost them i still have my memories. i wish however i took more video. i miss her voice. i am sure the kids do too.

but if i lost the media, frankly whatever. i already feel the loss daily anyway so … 🤷‍♀️

Given that the first 35 years of our lives, my husband and I accumulated photos that fit into about 20 albums and I can find photos from any time or event with ease. In the next 25 years we have maybe 100x as many and I can never locate the ones I’m looking because there are so F-ing many. I hope most of them get permanently lost! Plus, while I can get our kids to look as some of the ones in albums, I can never get them to look through the endless scroll of the ones online, even if I limit it one trip or event when there might only be a few hundred photos.

To be fair I don’t think much anyone but the parents care for the photos. The number of old photos and albums I see in antique stores and estate sales is staggering. I’m not saying nobody wants them at all, but generally unless you have something very interesting like Dad working on some important civic project or a snapshot of him in theater as a soldier, or Mom as Wendy the Welder or in a foreign country as Doctors Without Borders, most of the generic family shots of christmases and travel get filtered out into the trash.

Also, most all modern ink and paper is non-archival, so it won’t last.