A Brief Pause From The Ordinary..., Demographics time--please just humor me Options

[nasaman58]

I just joined this community last night, and I'm just curious about some of the people here. I'm only 19 years old, but I'm more interested in all things space than anyone I've ever met. Just out of curiosity, what are people's ages in this forum?

[Rxke]

Wow, this board truly is a place of talents!

I'm 35, and currently a student. Hopefully this will be my last (Thesis) year to become conservator/restorator of visual media.
In normal people speak: restoring old photographs, films and more and more : disaster prevention re: digital archiving, sigh. Stuff that's 100years old is ofthen in far better condition than stuff from the 70's either analog or digital. We're losing a tremendous amount of valuable information, that's only 20-30 years old...

Going back to full time studies is hard, when you did hard unskilled and temp work for more than ten years, I can assure you, but it's thrilling too. I do *not* regret it!

Oh, I'm from Belgium, and can't remember the days when i was *not* interested in the stuff outside our atmosphere, especially Mars, which I somehow consider as my lost homeplanet (yea, I'm weird...)

My best birthdaypresent was the landing of Spirit, friends that came visiting me were a bit frustrated I didn't spend any time with them, but was very close friends with my computer, occasionally jumping around like a lunatic, heehee!

[Bob Shaw]

We're losing a tremendous amount of valuable information, that's only 20-30 years old...

You're right...

...but wrong.

And here I speak from personal experience. The psychology of photography has changed with the advent of Photoshop (etc). Firstly, the veracity of 'real' images has become important in a way that was always previously cryptic. Secondly, access to data is now far more free - especially with the trend (long may it continue) towards full datasets being available rather than (sparse) selections. Thirdly, in the past we archived badly, but now we acknowledge that it is almost a duty, so in future the actualite may be more-or-less preserved. In the past, prints were rubbish and negatives were a nuisance.

I recently (as an example) scanned slides I took at the STS-1 launch, and was horrified by their degradation. They are now digitally *fixed* and *do* represent that moment in time in a way that analog media simply can't. As a second example, I got married in 1980. The clown that took the wedding photos skimped on the bleach/wash and the pictures are now degraded beyond belief (and he never provided the negatives). Had those images been digital, then something could have been done with them centuries from now...

Hardware may go out of fashion, but there will always be either new technology or old enthusiasts who can read elderly media; if pressed, I could read Vic-20 tapes or C64 disks, RLL or MFM HDUs, Apple II data, and so on. And any serious data-archiving agency could do much more!

In fact, we're now at the start of the Golden Age of data, where everything will be available so long as our civilisation persists!

If you want *before* and *after* conservation images, let me know!