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By Jack Moseley
I) The Illusion of Permanence
I recently had a few days off from work and school, and decided to make the trek out to Western Kentucky to visit my grandparents in Ohio County. My parents were able to do the same, and so we all returned to the little farmhouse where my dad grew up.
My family has kept that land for generations now, and these days it’s like walking through a museum–tobacco memorabilia, antiques, farm machinery, Maytag collectibles, the graveyard of dozens of forgotten family cars from the past 90 years. It’s a time capsule, in a way.
This time, the weather was poor and we stayed inside. Conversation drifted, and we eventually started talking about weddings. My dad let slip that they had a tape recording of their wedding from 1996, and after some time digging in the attic we were able to find it.
With bated breath, we slotted the old VHS into the dusty VCR and played the tape. At first, there was nothing but static. A mess of black and white danced across the screen. The video was warped, the colors bled together, and the sound was distorted, filled with hisses and crackles. Faces were hardly recognizable, as if time had taken sandpaper to the footage and scraped it to oblivion. Apart from a few precious moments, the laughter, joy, and hope in that tape were lost to the decades. Only a husk remained.
Like most stories of data loss, there was no happy ending.
VHS tapes are not immune to the passage of time. Magnetic tape gradually degrades. According to Kodak1, there are several risk factors that exacerbate deterioration, including storing tapes in hot or humid conditions (like an attic, or a basement); storing them near a magnetic source (such as VCRs or speakers); excessively rewinding and playing back tapes; and also how copying the VHS tapes multiple times (2nd or 3rd generation copies can result in generation loss). On average, VHS tapes degrade 10-20% every ten years.
There’s a misconception that analog media lasts forever—like a photograph—but in reality if you’ve been keeping home videos on tape for a few decades, your footage is most likely degraded. That cherished memory might now be little more than ghostly static.
At this point, we should all make immediate plans to digitize our VHS tapes. There are two main methods to digitize tapes. The first method is to convert the VHS to a DVD, and then to “rip” (download) the DVD file onto your computer using a disc drive. The second option is to convert the VHS directly to a digital format via either a specialized converter device or by using a
1 https://kodakdigitizing.com/blogs/news/how-long-do-vhs-tapes-last
screen capturing card, which is a device used for recording video and audio in a near-lossless format.
The illusion of permanence is a comforting but ultimately misleading mirage. Our memories, once captured and stored, seem untouchable. Growing up, I was always told that “everything on the internet lasts forever,” which was meant to be a warning against posting something I might later regret. However, the truth is that without regular maintenance, migration, and proactive care, the formats we trust will inevitably fail us.
Let’s run through some common data storage methods and their lifespans:
There is a saying in information technology that says, “if it doesn’t exist in three places, it doesn’t exist at all.” All of these storage methods are susceptible to corruption. CDs can be broken, power surges can destroy hard drives, and viruses can corrupt your data. When in doubt, always follow the 3-2-1 rule: maintain three copies of your data on two different mediums with one copy off site. And remember, all the digital copies in the world mean nothing if they’re not accessible.
But what about the cloud? Today, the majority of individuals and businesses utilize cloud storage. Google Drive has over 1 billion users; over 850 million people use iCloud; Dropbox has over 700 million users; and Microsoft’s OneDrive is used by over 500 million people. Cloud storage is convenient, reliable, and accessible from everywhere. However, it is important to realize that it is not perfect. Here is an excerpt from iCloud’s terms of service:
“Apple shall use reasonable skill and due care in providing the Service, but, TO THE GREATEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE BY APPLICABLE LAW, APPLE DOES NOT GUARANTEE OR WARRANT THAT ANY CONTENT YOU MAY STORE OR ACCESS THROUGH THE SERVICE WILL NOT BE SUBJECT TO INADVERTENT DAMAGE, CORRUPTION, LOSS, OR REMOVAL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, AND APPLE SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE SHOULD SUCH DAMAGE, CORRUPTION, LOSS, OR REMOVAL OCCUR. It is your responsibility to maintain appropriate alternate backup of your information and data.”2
2iCloud terms of service, section O: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/icloud/
II) The Forgotten Generation
What happens when an entire generation’s memories are scattered and lost? I think about my parents’ generation—they had the luxury of physical copies; dusty photo albums were tucked away in closets, and family home videos were stored on analog formats like VHS. While physical photographs and tapes degrade over time, they remain tangible. Their existence is acknowledged every time you stumble upon them in your attic—at the very least they will prompt you to recall memories and share stories from the past.
My generation grew up at a crossroad. We had digital cameras, rudimentary smartphones, and social media–our lives were documented in hybrid formats with shocking ease. But somewhere along the way, we trusted too much in the longevity of digital storage. Despite recording everything, I have lost almost all of the photographs and videos from my early teenage years. Moments with friends, vacations, birthdays…the trivial moments that didn’t deserve to be printed at the time, no longer exist outside of my memory.
The result is a generation whose collective memory is irreparably fragmented. We imagine our photos are still out there, floating somewhere in the cloud. Everything on the internet lasts forever, right? In reality, companies we relied on pivoted, servers were shut down, email logins were lost, accounts were hacked, and memories were left to fade, buried under years of disorganized digital clutter. The old charm of flipping through a photo album is now the modern nightmare of scrolling endlessly through corrupted folders of grainy photos named “IMG_04881” and “IMG_129192”. Our drive to capture everything has, ironically, left us with little of value.
This isn’t to say that everything is hopeless. Perhaps, instead, it’s a reminder to be more intentional. To print out the photographs that matter, to back up and maintain our own archives. To convert our old VHS tapes and create archives stored both in the cloud and on local storage networks, and to recognize that the preservation of memory is something that requires proactive acts of care. Maybe, through that intentionality, we can take back ground and become the documented generation we were supposed to be.
After I graduate, I plan to take a gap year before attending medical school. I have many plans for that year: I’ll continue bartending, catch up on the books I’ve wanted to read, practice playing the saxophone again…but beyond that, I’m going to task myself with archiving every scrap of data I can find for my family and myself—before it’s too late.
Jack Moseley is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2025. He is studying neuroscience and political science.