The demise of two media formats...

...well, that may be a little misleading. But only a little.

In a recent post I talked about using USB drives as my storage media of choice and I considered ideas about storage media. I was recently reminded of this when I saw the sad news that Kodachrome was dead: http://bit.ly/flvukK
I used this film, back in the day, as did millions of others around the world. I even developed a couple of rolls (with help) in the darkroom at high school. I used to love film photography and i loved the different formats of film; 35mm was king but I loved the neatness of 126 and the compactness of 110. I even have a 'collectable' 110 camera rattling around in one of my drawers at home. Sure, the resolution of those compact formats wasn't great but I didn't care; to me it was all about the art.
(If you ask nicely, one day I'll tell you how I got my first camera - it's the perfect origin story for a famous photographer; I simply failed to take advantage of the 'narrativium' surrounding me and did not become a famous photographer.)
As soon as digital camera's passed the resolutions available to ordinary click-and-shoot, paper copy cameras (yes, I'm ignoring slide photography) I was interested  but it wasn't until assorted flash memory storage options (like Memory Sticks, XD and SD cards) became mainstream that it became a truly viable option. There were some fascinating alternatives along the way. Do you remember the Kodak Disc camera? (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc%20film if you don't.) But, eventually, digital cameras became relatively cheap and people started using their PC's as a method of storing, organising and editing their happy snaps. Right along with that was the idea of storing photos on CD's.
Which brings me to this point...would you believe CD-ROM's have now been around for 25 years! I was astonished to realise this; I have mates who aren't that old!
Can you remember when your library first introduced CD-ROMS? No, you don't have to have been working there! It might have happened when you were still bemoaning your local library's lack of YA material. Heck, you might have been listening to your parent marvelling about the new technology!
Anyway, here is a pretty thought-provoking little piece about the history of CD-ROM's in library environments: http://www.librarytechnology.org/blog.pl?ThreadID=182&BlogID=1
I love the cover of CD-ROM world from 1994!
How many of us still have CD-ROM's? It's worth wondering just how much longer PC DVD drives will incorporate CD format support. Will Blu-Ray drives always remain backwards-compatible with CD's? No technological format last's forever, nor will readers of those formats always be available. Laser Discs are gone, microfiche readers are virtually impossible to find and now even the most venerable film format has expired.
For long-term, device-independent, data storage it's still pretty hard to beat printed paper.