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Having had to deal with a death in the last year or so, this makes a lot of sense to me; this actual part (the gov record of the will) is VERY rarely used. Now

Having had to deal with a death in the last year or so, this makes a lot of sense to me; this actual part (the gov record of the will) is VERY rarely used. Now if we can digitise the ones held with lawyers as well that would be great; IMHO the biggest problem for that is most of the lawyers handling this stuff are digitally inept. Heck a lot of these systems need digitising more, it's crazy how many doucments have to be sent around to tell one dept about something another dept has declared.

tivert 3y ago
You're only considering one use case. There are others: > It is feared that wills of ordinary people, some of whom may become historically significant in the future, risk being lost. > Wills are considered essential documents, particularly for social historians and genealogists, as they capture what people considered important at the time and reveal unknown family links. Digitization is not a problem, but the destruction of the originals is.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  I would think that for historical or genealogical research it actually makes no difference if the paper original is destroyed because what matters is the text: the assets the person had and how they wanted them dispersed, and the names of the people mentioned, maybe the wording.
  - toyg 3y ago
    Only if you trust digitalisation to be a perfectly faithful process, and digital artefacts fundamentally unmodifiable or falsifiable. Which we all know is totally the case... oh wait
  - simonw 3y ago
    From the article: > “You can see the indent of the pen and if the writer is excited or tense. There are minute details on the page which digitisation [can’t capture]. There is a thrilling sensation that you are looking at a document that a real human being wrote on. You get a connection to the past that digitised versions won’t give you.” More importantly: the digitization process is prone to errors and mistakes. Anyone who's spent any time browsing digital collections will have encountered pages that were scanned out of focus, or where a part of the page was illegibly crumpled, or a page was missed or miscategorized.
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago
      >There is a thrilling sensation that you are looking at a document that a real human being wrote on I think this is it. This is about emotions and sentimentality, not fundamental practical concerns. For the purpose of this discussion we of course assume that digitalisation is done correctly because this obviously has to be a comparison of the value of the original over a correct digital copy.
      - simonw 3y ago
        "You can see the indent of the pen and if the writer is excited or tense. There are minute details on the page which digitisation [can’t capture]". Plus my notes about digitization being error-prone.
        mytailorisrich 3y ago
        This applies only if the will is handwritten by the person and one has to wonder how important an artifact the indent of the pen is (it does not matter at all for genealogical research and it's probably not that important for historical research). I'm hoping that there are stronger arguments.
        pmontra 3y ago
        My bet is that in 2124 we will be able to use our eyes to read the original paper documents but we won't be able to read the 2024 digital copies anymore, unless we keep migrating them to the next standard. Furthermore the servers (hw+sw) are not for free and all government projects use to cost more than market prices. And finally, why does storing paper documents on shelves cost 4.5 M per year?
        maxerickson 3y ago
        Computing environments haven't changed a whole lot in the last 25 years, and current environments aren't that much bother to emulate. The ongoing integrity of the storage seems like a much larger concern than displaying the documents.
- kelnos 3y ago
  The originals don't have to be destroyed; perhaps these private organizations who are so interested in preserving them can pony up the cash to store them. Why should taxpayers be footing this bill?
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
10 years ago lloyds bank was in a dispute with the customer about their mortgage. Customer alleged one thing, the bank alleged another. The customer no longer had their contract, but the bank did. The customer lost the case, and ended up owing the bank significant sums of money. A year past, and the customer found his copy of the contract while cleaning house or whatever. If turned out, his copy was radically different form the one provided to him by the bank. It turns out that the bank 'reconstituted' the contract from their digital records. And it turned out nothing like the original.

tivert 3y ago

You're only considering one use case. There are others: > It is feared that wills of ordinary people, some of whom may become historically significant in the future, risk being lost. > Wills are considered essential documents, particularly for social historians and genealogists, as they capture what people considered important at the time and reveal unknown family links. Digitization is not a problem, but the destruction of the originals is.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
I would think that for historical or genealogical research it actually makes no difference if the paper original is destroyed because what matters is the text: the assets the person had and how they wanted them dispersed, and the names of the people mentioned, maybe the wording.
- toyg 3y ago
  Only if you trust digitalisation to be a perfectly faithful process, and digital artefacts fundamentally unmodifiable or falsifiable. Which we all know is totally the case... oh wait
- simonw 3y ago
  From the article: > “You can see the indent of the pen and if the writer is excited or tense. There are minute details on the page which digitisation [can’t capture]. There is a thrilling sensation that you are looking at a document that a real human being wrote on. You get a connection to the past that digitised versions won’t give you.” More importantly: the digitization process is prone to errors and mistakes. Anyone who's spent any time browsing digital collections will have encountered pages that were scanned out of focus, or where a part of the page was illegibly crumpled, or a page was missed or miscategorized.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    >There is a thrilling sensation that you are looking at a document that a real human being wrote on I think this is it. This is about emotions and sentimentality, not fundamental practical concerns. For the purpose of this discussion we of course assume that digitalisation is done correctly because this obviously has to be a comparison of the value of the original over a correct digital copy.
    - simonw 3y ago
      "You can see the indent of the pen and if the writer is excited or tense. There are minute details on the page which digitisation [can’t capture]". Plus my notes about digitization being error-prone.
      - mytailorisrich 3y ago
        This applies only if the will is handwritten by the person and one has to wonder how important an artifact the indent of the pen is (it does not matter at all for genealogical research and it's probably not that important for historical research). I'm hoping that there are stronger arguments.
        pmontra 3y ago
        My bet is that in 2124 we will be able to use our eyes to read the original paper documents but we won't be able to read the 2024 digital copies anymore, unless we keep migrating them to the next standard. Furthermore the servers (hw+sw) are not for free and all government projects use to cost more than market prices. And finally, why does storing paper documents on shelves cost 4.5 M per year?
        maxerickson 3y ago
        Computing environments haven't changed a whole lot in the last 25 years, and current environments aren't that much bother to emulate. The ongoing integrity of the storage seems like a much larger concern than displaying the documents.
kelnos 3y ago
The originals don't have to be destroyed; perhaps these private organizations who are so interested in preserving them can pony up the cash to store them. Why should taxpayers be footing this bill?

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

10 years ago lloyds bank was in a dispute with the customer about their mortgage. Customer alleged one thing, the bank alleged another. The customer no longer had their contract, but the bank did. The customer lost the case, and ended up owing the bank significant sums of money. A year past, and the customer found his copy of the contract while cleaning house or whatever. If turned out, his copy was radically different form the one provided to him by the bank. It turns out that the bank 'reconstituted' the contract from their digital records. And it turned out nothing like the original.