You Tube and Electronic Data

[John]

I use Google Alerts for things I am interested in, like survival, primitive survival and other things. Helps me not to miss any items, articles etc. posted on the internet.

But, I have noticed as time goes on there are more and more items posted on You Tube, that is video clips. Now these can be useful for taking you through the 'how to' of any given process. You might then practice and may be more than once before you get it anywhere like in the clip.

My problem and I think for others is that post SHTF we are not going to have much or any electric. Eventually it will stop altogether and even batteries need charging. OK, solar is fine but even then eventually things will break down and go wrong and who is going to repair them or replace them.

So you will not be able to look at your You Tube clip to check the 'how to', to see if you missed something or did something wrong. From a teaching point of view for future generation it would be hopeless.

At least in print, and even pictures in print, you have something that will last a lot longer and you can always do what the monks did, copy to more paper, if you have some or can make some.

Do you see the problem, and this applies to any electronically produced and duplicated or transmitted information. Even this posting.

John

[bigpaul]

thanks John, straight to the point as usual! this is the reason why i print anything interesting and put a hard copy in a hard backed file, i am surrounded by books. when the power goes off so does anything electrical, computers will be useless then, any info stored on them will be lost.

[Tarrel]

The usual response to this issue is to suggest printing stuff out and archiving it, which makes a lot of sense. However, I wonder whether anyone has done a serious study of how long a typical consumer-printed written document will last?

I am a keen amateur photographer, and do a lot of printing to exhibition and competition standard. I know there is a world of difference between professional inks and papers, that can last up to 200 years, and the normal run-of-the-mill consumer products that will fade within a decade or so. Acid content of the paper has a lot to do with it, plus the type and formulation of the inks. Storage of the finished document is also a factor.

If you're looking to build an archive for your family's future, I'd seriously think about buying professionally printed books covering the key topics (food-growing, mechanics, medicine, plant-identification, etc.). These are likely to last much longer than home-printed documents.

[NorthernRaider]

I've been selective and printing off the most informative articles for years as a hard copy backup, i did manage to accidentally ruin some stuff last year when I knocked a cup of coffee over, but overall I try to keep a printed record of the good stuff.

[Highlander]

I must admit that I haven't done this yet,.. but I will get to the printing, in fact there is no time like the present, some will have already have been done by this time tomorrow.

I do have a small collection of books stored away