Recently I decided I would transfer my extensive collection of audio tapes to a brand spanking new digital format. Now I was never a vinyl record sort of guy, partly because we didn't really have a decent record player at home (I do remember having the wind up type with a darning needle for the pick up. Great for 78's but not for much else). Also when I started listening to music (I was a bit of a late developer in this) Walkman's were in vogue and the possibilities of portable music were too much to resist. I was also late in getting into CD's and kept buying tapes far later than I really should of done. The result is I really have a lot of tapes gathered over a lot of years.
Over the years however they got played less and less and ended up cluttering the dining room where occasionally I would trip over them. Eventually they got relegated to to that last resting ground of the unwanted, the loft, together with the tape player. But it was always my intention to do something with them and eventually I bit the bullet, got the tape player down put the first tape in and set about transferring them to MP3's
This is where I hit my first problem. Apparently lofts are not the best places for storing electrical apparatus, being subjected to hot and cold temperatures cycles. To cut a long story short it did not work. I opened it up and played around with the insides but it was clear it was dead. So the tape player went to the skip and we resorted to plan B. I bought one of those connect your Walkman to your computer devices from Aldi and tried again. This is where I found out that tapes are no happier with lofts than tape players. I managed to get one tape to play (ironically it was the 1st tape I ever bought - Concerts from China by Jean Michel Jarre [This was the 80's it could of been far worse]), but the 2nd and 3rd tape either refused to play or played in that sort of out of sync slow way which tapes had a habit of doing just before they terminally wrapped themselves round your tape deck capstan.
So instead I bought a tape player from Ebay (£0.99 plus £10 p&P). This thing is built like a proverbial tank and I was sure that if anything would play tapes this would. Well the 1st one worked, but from then on it went down hill and again I had failed.
In desperation (and generally I only do this in desperation) I asked my beloved wife for her advice. Now I say in desperation not because she gives out bad advice, but her advice generally is too good. It is the advice I don't want to hear. The kind that makes sense in your head at the same time that it breaks your heart.
"Why don't you just buy CD's of the tapes you like and chuck away the rest"? she said
My 1st reaction was dismissive. That she obviously did not understand the issue. My 2nd thought was the cost, but then why had I already spent over £30 on the equipment?
Then I started thinking. Why exactly did I want to copy my tapes? I mean even if I did manage it, it would only result in producing a 2nd rate copy when better were available on the Internet. Also when exactly did I ever listen to music nowadays. Sometimes I have CD on in the car and if I'm travelling by plane I'll take my MP3 player with me but it's not like in my youth when music was playing all the time. The truth is between work, the kids, and finding a time when I am not on the computer or the TV is not on, there is not much opportunity to play music. I have over a hundred CD's and very few ever get played in the house.
Then it hit me why I was so keen to transfer the tapes. Firstly there was the technical challenge. But mainly it was for the memories that the music represented. These tapes represent important points in my life such as hanging out with friends at school (ELO, Jean Michel Jarre), My first concerts (OMD, Thomas Dolby), Meeting my wife (Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Tpau[Sorry, like I said it was the 80's]), my maturing tastes into classical and blues. It was nostalgia, big time.
Of course nostalgia is not a game you play by yourself. Oh no the whole family must join in. "Gather rounds kids and listen to what your dad used to listen too when he was a kid" sort of thing(whether you want to or not). It also forms part of my legacy; my I was here moment. Legacy's however can be a pain on to those they are bestowed. Take for example my cousin's husband who received thousand's of classical records in a bequest. Now he is not a great classical fan, and being records they take up a lot of space, but he can't get rid of them because of where they came from and what they represent. So they sit there forming expensive wall insulation in his dining room.
And of course it's not just music. Leaving a legacy nowadays is getting more and more difficult.
Take photos. 20 years ago it was easy, hand over the bound books or boxes of slides and you were done. Your memories had been passed to the next generation so that in 50 years time your descendent can marvel at great granddad's 80's haircut .
Now it is different. While I do have some physical photos I have not taken a non-digital one for over 10 years now. While at first I would print some out, even that has now passed when it is far easier to stick them on Facebook. There are people reaching adulthood who will never have taken a physical photo. All there memories are stored on hard disk, Flikr, Facebook, etc. How will we pass those memories down? Will hard disks we have now still be accessible in 30 years time? Will the DVD's we created with all those photo's be readable. Will Google or Facebook still exist or have gone the way of Altavista and mySpace taking our memories with it. Even if they do, will we have the passwords and logins to access them?
True story. There exists a true representation of one of mankind's greatest events, the 1st man on the moon. Not the poor definition copy the people saw round the world, but one that was recorded as it was beamed back from the moon and before it was transferred to a format suitable for the TV's of the day.
However it cannot be found. At some point it was placed in a tin can, labelled, shifted off somewhere and lost. We know this because NASA was having a clear out and was about to scrap the only machines that could read these tapes. So they thought it would be a good idea to transfer the tape to digital. At which point they found it was missing. Now the tape almost certainly still exists and one day someone will be clearing out the equivalent of an attic somewhere and will come across it. But there is a fair chance by then that we will not have the capability of reading it. If NASA can't deal with legacy, what chance do we have?
And if that is not bad enough what about correspondence. In a shoe box I still have all the letters between me an Jackie when we were going out (I was a soppy git then believe me). If I was doing it today I would probably do it via email or text. Apart from the fact instead of carefully crafted missives it would consist of hieroglyphs such as LOL, ROFL, which are bare comprehensible to anyone over 30, how will we access them in 20 years time? How will our descendants obtain that insight in our personalities. Just imagine if Jane Austin had been living today, what we would of lost.
The irony is that we are in a world where we make more content affirming our existence than ever in the history of civilisation, but will probably leave less to our descendants than ever before.
However this is not our problem. I know where my photo's are, how to access my email account. It's my descendants, who if they wish to access these memories who will be left with the problem of achieving it.
Life's a bitch but at least it stops when you die. Nostalgia nowadays can seriously affect generations for years to come..
