They say that over 70% of all silent feature movies are lost to time (flamable/decomposing nitrate film stock).
I’d bet that more that 50% of all website pages created between 1994 and 2000 are lost. And there are blogs, ramblings, personal history accounts, genealogical data, etc that was posted.
People take thousands of photos with digital cameras yet are not so prone to saving all of those images to some cloud storage or hardcopy.
I’ve never received numerous “cellphone photos” when the phone was lost/broken/stolen etc. before it was transmitted to me.
The current “documents” are prone to being lost within 20 years.
You can go to a antique show or yardsale and buy old postcards or photo albums. NO ONE will be selling an unwiped harddrive at a yardsale with the intention that you will be rummaging through the content.
What is not valuable to someone now might be valuable in a few years.
I have converted mag reel to reel tapes and old film movies. A “reel” pain. I have a movie projector and had to rent a reel to reel player. The equipment will be difficult to find in a couple of years.
Even hi-8 media and camcorders are obsolete. You can probably still find them on the Internet. and mini-DV?
It requires a bit of knowledge and maintenance.
And once converted digitally, it has to be maintained.
You are so right, that people are not adequately preserving picture (and video) content for the ages. Even if people print some content on home inkjet printers, the printed copies will not hold up well after a decade or two. Much better to have them printed by a professional service to standard photo paper.
As for digital content, make several copies, stored in different safe locations. Doesn't make sense to have multiple copies all in the same house, that could be lost due to bad circumstances. A friend of mine lost her home in the San Bruno gas explosion (one of the first three to burn) and all her personal memorabilia of her parents and family were lost. Even her safe melted and burned and all contents lost. Get a relative to hold a copy.