Random access: wither your digital media?(Professional Resources)

Life used to be so simple. Over the course of many years, we would accumulate a library of tangible media. Books and music adorned our shelves, we stuffed our albums with photos and we acquired special containers that held our ever growing collections of LPs, cassettes, CDs, VHS tapes and DVDs.

Our accumulation of all of this stuff brought with it storage problems. But using this stuff was generally pretty easy. To use a book, piece of music or photo album, all you had to do was remove it from the shelf and use your eyes to consume it. Enjoying a recording or video meant taking an LP, cassette, CD, videotape or DVD from its case, and popping it into the appropriate player. True, the media players of choice have changed over time, but the commonly used players of the last 50 years (record players, cassette players, videotape players and CD/DVD players) are readily available today even if the particular medium has gone out of vogue.

Advantages of Digital Media

With the rising popularity of digital media--electronic books and music scores, MIDI files, MP3s, digital photos and digital videos--we have started to enjoy many conveniences. For one thing, we don't have to devote large areas of shelf space to our media. All we really need is either increasingly large computer hard drives and/or easy access to our media from online sources.

The advantages of digital media don't stop with the uncluttering of our shelves and drawers. Digital media doesn't wear out. No more dog-eared books or pieces of music. Nor more crumbled or faded photos. No more scratchy records, worn out tapes or damaged and unreadable CDs or DVDs. In theory, the digital media in your computer should last forever without any loss of quality.

But Will You Have Access to Your Media Tomorrow?

At first glance, it would appear as though we can enjoy our digital media at any time we so desire and easily share it with friends. It is no problem to attach a digital photo to an e-mail or to copy an audio file to an iPod or similar listening device. Even large data files--such as digital videos--can be uploaded to personal websites or to public online locations, such as www.youtube.com.