4 ms·

>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 sentimentali

>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.
      - pmontra 3y ago
        I have the floppy disks of my first Slackware Linux installation. I'm not sure if I can still read them. I should have a Toshiba laptop from year 2000 with a floppy disk reader but will it work? Of course if I cared about those files (I don't) I should have copied them to a HDD, then to a SSD like I did with everything else. Think of archives on tapes and the plans to keep moving them across storage technology. That costs too and if you fail at that eventually all you have is an unreadable piece of plastic and silicon. Maybe you should save copies to at least two of the major could storages and let them do the job of keeping current. I won't destroy the original though.
- kelnos 3y ago
  OCR is error-prone, but once you've scanned the document, you don't have to delete the raw scan. If errors are found, the digitized text can be updated. This is no worse than a physical record that you have to manually look at to figure out what it says.
  - simonw 3y ago
    That won't help much for "scanned out of focus, or where a part of the page was illegibly crumpled, or a page was missed or miscategorized" - from my earlier comment.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> This is about emotions and sentimentality, not fundamental practical concerns. This may be about practical concerns taking priority over emotional ones, but don't mistake what is practical as being more fundamental than that which is emotional.
- halostatue 3y ago
  That would be "alleged" practical concerns, IMO. I’m not convinced that archival quality digital storage would be any cheaper than paper storage, and would likely be substantially more expensive in the long run.

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.
    - pmontra 3y ago
      I have the floppy disks of my first Slackware Linux installation. I'm not sure if I can still read them. I should have a Toshiba laptop from year 2000 with a floppy disk reader but will it work? Of course if I cared about those files (I don't) I should have copied them to a HDD, then to a SSD like I did with everything else. Think of archives on tapes and the plans to keep moving them across storage technology. That costs too and if you fail at that eventually all you have is an unreadable piece of plastic and silicon. Maybe you should save copies to at least two of the major could storages and let them do the job of keeping current. I won't destroy the original though.
kelnos 3y ago
OCR is error-prone, but once you've scanned the document, you don't have to delete the raw scan. If errors are found, the digitized text can be updated. This is no worse than a physical record that you have to manually look at to figure out what it says.
- simonw 3y ago
  That won't help much for "scanned out of focus, or where a part of the page was illegibly crumpled, or a page was missed or miscategorized" - from my earlier comment.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

> This is about emotions and sentimentality, not fundamental practical concerns. This may be about practical concerns taking priority over emotional ones, but don't mistake what is practical as being more fundamental than that which is emotional.

halostatue 3y ago
That would be "alleged" practical concerns, IMO. I’m not convinced that archival quality digital storage would be any cheaper than paper storage, and would likely be substantially more expensive in the long run.