Fahrenheit doesn't have to be 451 any more.

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Yevver read Fahrenheit 451? You should.

How many times has your computer crashed? How much stuff have you lost in computer crashes?

We won't even talk about spam filters

How many pictures have you lost? Pictures you felt were REALLY important?

Felt stupid about not doing backups? Resolved to do backups more regularly?

Doesn't matter if you made backups or not. Really.

No. It doesn't matter.

Even if you back up EVERYTHING on your computer, may copies on all kinds of disks, it won't matter.

You are still going to lose all that stuff.

Wanna bet?

How many files do you have on 8" floppies? For you young folks, 
the 8" floppy was the original portable storage device like DVDs are today. You'd be able to get about one long word processing file on a disk.

Got a computer that'll read those disks? Ever seen a computer that'll read one of those disks?

Got your backup handy?

OK, how about 3.5" disk backups? How many of them do you have? Remember when they were called Macintosh disks?

Uhn huh.

How about a Jazz disk? SuperFloppy?

There's a severalfold problem with those storage media. They are magnetic. A good magnet and they're gone.

The magnetic bits are embedded in a piece of plastic and eventually the magnetic bits fall off.

At one time reel to reel was considered to be the ultimate in permanent storage. Playing caused the magnetic bits to come off the celluloid strips. The magnetic bits fell off anyway.

Remember when Memorex offered a lifetime warranty of cassettes and then floppy disks? Have you recently tried to claim that lifetime warranty? Memorex will only replace the cassette or disk (if they have one) not the date you lost.

5.25 Floppy. It actually flopped.

Say you even HAVE a floppy disk drive any more. Can you still access the data on those disks? I can't. I have backups from more than a decade ago. I have a computer, at home, which will PROBABLY read the disks if I can get the computer to work.

Do you have a computer more than 10 years old which works?

There's the real problem with electronic backups. Eventually you won't be able to get the information off. Your computer won't be able to read the data from the backups.

Cloud computing? 10 years ago we called it "online storage." Lots of companies that offered online storage are now out of business and took with 'em everything their customers stored on line. Besides which unless you update those files regularly, to the newest generation of the software used to read and create the files, you're wasting online space for reasons I mention above.

If the company doesn't exist, is the guarantee any good?

I'm not pointing fingers at you. I'm guilty of the same things. I've lost stuff in the (incredibly rare cause I use Mac) computer crashes. I do store stuff online. The really really important stuff is saved and updated frequently to the newest version of that software.

But even that's not a guarantee. Anyone other than me remember the GEM operating software? Didn't think so.

Just because a software company exists today doesn't mean it will exist tomorrow.

Our data is not secure against the immediate ravages of a couple of years' worth of time.

What do you do?

Got Bradbury?

You make backups that last for years. Turn your blogs into a book - it's never been cheaper. Really. Print hard copies of your pictures and turn them into a book as well.

Think about those times you sit around looking at pictures decades old and try to remember who is in the picture. You try to remember what you doing when the picture was taken. Sometimes we remember and the walk down memory lane is awesome. Those pictures are a tangible connection to the past.

Will people 20-30-40 years from now be able to look at the pictures you take today and take a walk into the past?

We don't need Fahrenheit 451. We're doing it to ourselves, regretting every minute of it and still not doing a damn thing to stop the destruction.