科技時代,記憶何處安放?

別再指望幾十年后你那些長大成人的孫輩們還能看到你現(xiàn)在為他們拍攝的錄像了。建議你還是采用老式的方法——拿起數(shù)碼相機(jī)，拍下靜態(tài)的照片，用優(yōu)質(zhì)的墨在高品質(zhì)的相紙上打印出來，然后放入相冊里。

A few weeks ago， as I was rummaging1) in a drawer in my father’s house， I came across a dozen reels of developed 8-millimetre film. I’d known the reels were in the house somewhere. But， for many years， I’d resolutely put the fact out of my mind. The films contained clips of my family in the late 1950s and early 1960s， not long before my mother became gravely2) ill. Over the intervening decades I hadn’t had the heart to3) look at them.

But， this time， I packed the films into a shoebox and took them to someone who specializes in converting old films into digital form. Within a week， I had all the clips on a DVD and was showing them to my wife and two young children. There I was—three years old—with my mother and father playing on the swing set4) outside my childhood home near Victoria， learning to swim with my mother， hunting for Easter eggs with her in the field and forest nearby.

It was one of the first occasions that my children had seen images of their grandmother， and the first time I’d seen anything other than a still picture of her since I was 13. Even without sound， the emotional impact was inexpressible. It was as if I’d stepped into a time-travel machine and shot more than 50 years into the past.

We all want to capture happy family moments so we can relive them again in later years. But half a century is a really long time. Will any of today’s family digital recordings last that long? Will today’s children be able to see videos of themselves taken now in， say， 2070? These holidays， as we reach for the digital camera or video recorder， we assume they will—but we’re probably wrong.

I love technology just as much as the next person5)， but we have a real problem here. Today’s information technology is creating what we might call an Age of Ephemera6). Our unprecedented ability to store and transfer gargantuan7) amounts of information obscures this information’s modern fragility.

Two factors are at play. The first is what people in the business call “media decay.” The physical material we use to store our information changes over time. Some materials deteriorate very slowly: Acid-free paper can last for 500 years， and the lifespan of archival-quality microfilm is about 200 years. But the kind of recordable CD on which most of us store our family photos can be unreadable in as few as five years， because the dyes in the CD’s recording layer fade， especially if the disk is stored in light.

The second and ultimately more serious factor is change in the hardware and software of the recording technology itself. Most of us have had the experience of coming across an old 5.25-inch computer floppy disk8)， looking at it with amusement—or horror， if it contains important information—then throwing it into a wastebasket because we don’t know anyone with a machine that can read such a thing now. Even if the recording medium hasn’t deteriorated and still contains the data， the technology to translate that data into a useable form—such as words or pictures on a screen—may have largely disappeared.

Many of the information-storage technologies from the middle of the last century were far less vulnerable to these problems. My father’s house also contains boxes of thousands of my mother’s slide9) photographs of landscapes and wildlife. She used Kodak Ektachrome10) film and， after nearly 60 years， the colour in the slides is almost as accurate as the day the photos were developed. And I don’t need a complex and long-lost technology to see the photos—just a simple magnifying glass.

Even the device needed to “read” my 8-mm films—an old reel-to-reel projector—is relatively simple. It consists of lenses， sprockets11)， belts and light bulbs， and it can be maintained and used for decades by an artisan working in a small shop， such as the person I consulted to convert my films into digital form. It’s hard to imagine the same being true in 2070 of an iMac or PC manufactured today.

These problems are all well-known. The solution， we’re told， is to re-record or “migrate” our most important data every few years to new media or new technologies. But there’s a problem with this advice: We’re human. We get distracted， we forget， we get sick， we die. And before we know it， those precious family films and photos locked away in digital form are gone forever.

My advice? Forget about recording videos for your grandchildren to see when they’re adults decades from now. Use your digital camera to take still photographs， have them printed with good inks on high-quality stock12)， and put them in a photo album—the old-fashioned way.

幾個星期前，我在父親家里的一個抽屜里翻找東西，偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)了12卷已經(jīng)沖洗過的八毫米膠片。我早就知道這些膠片存放在房子的某個角落里，但多年以來，我卻毅然決然地將這一事實(shí)拋諸腦外。這些膠片記錄了20世紀(jì)50年代后期和60年代初期我們家的生活片段，在那之后不久，我的母親就患了重病。后來的幾十年里，我一直都不忍心去看這些膠片。

不過，這一次，我把膠片裝進(jìn)一個鞋盒，然后送到一個專業(yè)人士那里，請他把老膠片轉(zhuǎn)成數(shù)碼格式。不到一個星期，所有的錄影片段都被儲存到一張DVD上了。我把這些錄影片段放給妻子和我兩個年幼的孩子看。片子里的我才三歲，一會兒是和父母在維多利亞附近我兒時的老宅外面玩秋千，一會兒是跟著母親學(xué)游泳，一會兒是和母親一起在附近的田間和森林里尋找復(fù)活節(jié)彩蛋。

這是我的孩子們頭一次看到他們祖母的影像，也是我自打13歲以來頭一次看到她的影像，其間我只是看看她的一張靜態(tài)照片而已。盡管影像中沒有聲音，我還是感到莫可名狀的激動。我覺得自己仿佛步入了一臺時空穿梭器，瞬間回到了五十多年前的過去。

我們都希望捕捉住家庭的幸福時刻，這樣我們就可以在以后的歲月里重溫?？墒牵雮€世紀(jì)的時間真的很漫長，現(xiàn)在有哪個家庭的數(shù)字記錄能保存那么久呢？今天的孩子到2070年的時候還能看到現(xiàn)在拍攝的影像嗎？每逢節(jié)假日，當(dāng)我們拿起數(shù)碼相機(jī)或者攝像機(jī)拍攝的時候，我們以為將來能看到它們——但也許我們錯了。

我和其他人一樣熱愛科技，但我們都面臨一個現(xiàn)實(shí)存在的問題。當(dāng)今的信息技術(shù)造就了一個時代，我們或許可以稱之為“蜉蝣時代”。我們在儲存和轉(zhuǎn)移海量的信息方面具備了前所未有的能力，但這種能力卻使我們無法看清信息在這個時代所呈現(xiàn)的脆弱性。

信息的脆弱性包含兩個方面的因素。第一個因素是行業(yè)人士所稱的“媒體介質(zhì)衰變”。我們用于存儲信息的物質(zhì)材料會隨著時間的推移發(fā)生變化。有的材料退化得非常慢：無酸紙張可以保存五百年，檔案用縮微膠片的壽命約為兩百年?？墒?，我們大多數(shù)人用來存儲家庭照片的可刻錄光盤可能僅僅五年的時間就不能讀了，這是因?yàn)楣獗P刻錄層的染料會褪色，尤其是光盤不避光保存的話。

第二個因素是錄制技術(shù)本身軟硬件的變化，這也是從根本上來看更為嚴(yán)重的一個因素。我們大多數(shù)人都有這樣的經(jīng)歷：偶然間發(fā)現(xiàn)一張陳舊的5.25英寸計(jì)算機(jī)軟盤，看著它，覺得很好笑——如果里面存有重要資料的話就是惶恐了——然后就隨手扔進(jìn)廢紙簍里，因?yàn)槲覀儾恢垃F(xiàn)在誰還會有可以讀這玩意兒的機(jī)器了。即便錄制介質(zhì)沒有變質(zhì)，里面的數(shù)據(jù)仍然完好無損，但能把那些數(shù)據(jù)轉(zhuǎn)成可用形式(比如可在屏幕上顯示的文字或圖片)的技術(shù)手段也大都消失殆盡了。

而對于上個世紀(jì)中期發(fā)展起來的一些信息存儲技術(shù)而言，上述問題構(gòu)成的威脅就小得多。我父親的房子里還存放著好幾個盒子，里面有數(shù)以千計(jì)的幻燈片，都是我母親拍攝的風(fēng)景照和野生動植物的照片。她用的是柯達(dá)?？怂肆_姆系列膠卷，如今歷時將近六十年，幻燈片幾乎仍然保有沖洗當(dāng)日的原色。而我要看這些照片，根本用不上什么復(fù)雜且遺棄已久的技術(shù)——一面放大鏡足矣。

甚至用來“讀”我那些八毫米膠片的設(shè)備也比較簡單——一臺老舊的膠片放映機(jī)即可。這種放映機(jī)由鏡頭、輸片齒輪、傳動帶和燈泡組成，隨便一個小作坊里的技工就能維護(hù)和使用數(shù)十年，比如我請其將我的膠片轉(zhuǎn)成數(shù)碼格式的那個人就可以。但我們很難想象，到了2070年，這樣的事情會發(fā)生在今天生產(chǎn)的蘋果電腦或普通個人電腦上。

這些都是眾所周知的問題。我們被告知的解決辦法是，隔幾年就把我們最重要的數(shù)據(jù)重新錄制或者“遷徙”到新的介質(zhì)或新的技術(shù)產(chǎn)品上。但這個建議存在一個問題：我們都是人，注意力會分散，會忘事，會生病，會死去。在我們意識到之前，那些以數(shù)碼形式束之高閣的珍貴家庭錄影和照片已經(jīng)一去不復(fù)返了。

要問我的建議？別再指望幾十年后你那些長大成人的孫輩們還能看到你現(xiàn)在為他們拍攝的錄像了。建議你還是采用老式的方法——拿起數(shù)碼相機(jī)，拍下靜態(tài)的照片，用優(yōu)質(zhì)的墨在高品質(zhì)的相紙上打印出來，然后放入相冊里。

1.rummage [#712;r#652;m#618;d#658;] vi. 到處翻尋

2.gravely [ɡre#618;vli] adv. 嚴(yán)重地

3.have the heart to (do sth.)：有勇氣(做某事)

4.swing set：秋千

5.as much as the next person：與別人一樣多

6.ephemera [#618;#712;fem#601;r#601;] n. [昆]蜉蝣。蜉蝣是目前已知的壽命最短的昆蟲，因而該詞常用來比喻生命短促的人(或物)。本文中的Age of Ephemera便是比喻數(shù)字時代的科技產(chǎn)品壽命很短暫。

7.gargantuan [ɡɑ#720;#712;ɡaelig;nt#643;u#601;n] adj. 巨大的，龐大的

8.floppy disk：軟盤

9.slide [sla#618;d] n. 幻燈片，又稱為正片或反轉(zhuǎn)片，是一種透明膠片，可以通過投影的方式顯示圖像。

10.Ektachrome：埃克塔克羅姆彩色反轉(zhuǎn)片，柯達(dá)公司旗下的一個膠卷品牌

11.sprocket [#712;spr#594;k#618;t] n. 輸片齒輪，用于傳輸電影膠片。

12.stock [st#594;k] n. 打印紙