Denver Catholic

15 DENVER CATHOLIC | FEBRUARY 25-MARCH 10, 2017 A few tips on managing your digital archives A ccording to a study done in 2015, 68 percent of Americans have a smartphone. If you count yourself among this number, there's a very good chance you have some pic- tures stored on it. Birth- day parties, spouses, kids, Christmas, selfi es… just think of all the fi le space your pictures take up! On a somber but related note, have you heard of the coming "Digital Dark Age?" Computer scientist Vint Cerf, widely recognized as one of the founders of the modern Internet, coined this expression, which is based on the idea that if we do not take active steps to preserve our digital information, it may disappear forever, thus rendering any records we're keeping for future generations lost. "But wait," you say. "I have all of my pictures saved on a disk/external hard drive/the cloud, so I'm safe, right?" Not necessarily. Take a look at the lifespan of media formats through history ( below). Do you have fi les or photos that are more than 10 years old? Digital fi les more than 10 years old are at substan- tial risk for loss or degradation, such that you might not be able to access them. Think about it: if you had all of your pictures stored on your phone and you misplaced it, it got stolen, or perhaps it burst into fl ames, what would happen? Those pictures would be gone forever! So what should you do with those pictures? Did you know that in its current form, Google Photos (this is not an endorsement necessarily, though it is one of the formats I use) is only a year old? In just that one year, Google has collected almost 2,000,000,000 (that's billion!) animations, collages, movies and other digital objects. Taking up 13.7 petabytes of space (1 petabyte is 1,000 terabytes, and consider that 1 terabyte is a standard hard drive on a laptop you can buy in the store today) and 24 billion selfi es, it would take you 424 years to swipe through that many photos, according to Google's blog page. Now, before you get too depressed by all this news, there's still time to take proactive measures to ensure all of your digital treasures are not lost. Here are some ideas on storing your digital archive, with an eye specifi - cally toward photos. 1. Set up a folder on your computer to begin the process. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. 2. Identify where all of your pictures "live." Where are all of my pic- tures? I use Facebook, Twitter, Ins- tagram, Shutterfl y, and many other photo storing apps. 3. Identify the important moments: do you really need 39 pictures of your 18-month old eating one dinner with her grandma? Perhaps you could pick the best 5. 4. Aim to have at least three copies of everything. I know how redundant this sounds, but if you don't back it up, you run the risk of losing it. How you choose to do this is up to you, but you can use SD cards, a USB drive, DVD or Blu-Ray discs, external hard drives or a cloud service. 5. Actively manage your archive. Now that you have a handle on your information, keep it that way. Post new pictures to your backup locations, make sure their date and geotag locations (if they're turned on) are correct, and most impor- tantly, keep up! 6. Lastly, if it's feasible, print out the important moments and set a date to scrapbook. Think back to the photo albums you have or that you remember looking at as a child; maybe a picture or three per month that are important enough to want to pick up o¡ your bookshelf. We aren't talking necessarily about preserving our cultural heritage by saving all the selfi es you've taken; but we can begin to think about how to tame/manage our digital photo presence. Guest Column Stephen Sweeney is the director of the Cardinal J. Francis Sta° ord Library. STEPHEN SWEENEY LIFESPAN OF MEDIA: • Clay/Stone Tablet: 4,000 years • Pigment on paper: 2,000 years • Modern color photographic fi lm: Decades • Magnetic disk (most computers): 3-20 years • DVD: 5-20 years The Hidden Figures of the Space Race T he great deeds and discoveries of humanity always have one or several protagonists, but also hundreds of people who act "behind the scenes" and whose names may never be recorded in history. The talent and hard work of three women was required for America's pivotal role in the Space Race, and eventually, the historic land- ing of astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. and Michael Colling on the moon. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson all had something in common: They were African-American. It was writer Margot Lee Shetterly, the daughter of an African-American researcher at the Langley Investiga- tion Center at NASA, who discovered the unknown story and decided that the feat of these three wome n was worth telling. Her book was turned into a fi lm and today, Hidden Figures is nominated for several Oscars, includ- ing best picture. The United States, between the 1940s and 1970s, was in an era of racism. The segregation that sepa- rated some public places between white and African descendants was a measure rejected by some citizens, but socially accepted by others. These three women lived this situation in their college years and working life. They had to walk (and sometimes run) a whole mile to use the restroom, were forced to sit in the far back of public buses and had to take co¡ ee from a co¡ eemaker specifi cally for colored people. It was a time of the violent acts perpetrated by Ku Klux Klan, the time of the battle of Martin Luther King Jr. for the equality between white and African-Americans and also the time of his murder. It was in this context that these brave, courageous women set out to solve equations and calculations that later became decisive for inter-space travel. Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectory of the Apollo and Mer- cury missions, Dorothy Vaughan was the fi rst African-American supervisor for NASA and Mary Jackson became the fi rst African-American engineer for NASA. The movie shows Johnson as a child, a little girl passionate about numbers, about calculating and count- ing everything she saw around her. It was a talent she cultivated, and one that made her the fi rst African-Amer- ican woman to graduate from West Virginia State University. This great mind was also discovered and valued by her professors and she helped to solve equations that had been thought impossible to solve, equations that later expanded the conquest for space. Hidden Figures features an excel- lent cast and combines well the moments of tension, drama and humor. It is a story that exalts the spirit and highlights the life of these three women who believed in them- selves and did not label themselves by any social or racial prejudice that we now see consequences of. It is also a story that shows how their colleagues respected them and learned from them little by little. The book and now the fi lm bearing the same name draw from the "hiding place" of the talent, discipline and self-confi dence of Katherine, Dorothy and Mary, whose silent work marked a milestone in the history of space exploration. Guest Column Carmen Elena Villa is the editor of El Pueblo Católico. CARMEN ELENA VILLA PHOTO: 20TH CENTURY FOX

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