RE: Our responsibilty with Inkjet Printing

["Michael Keller" <keller@wvinter.net>]

<x-charset iso-8859-1>Laurie, in all honesty, I have no idea what you were addressing in your
response to my response about upgrading hardware. We were discussing the
idea of archiving materials, staying current with technology, and I presumed
we were talking about people who have files THEY create and THEY need.
People on fixed incomes may shoot digital photos, I don't know. I DO know
that where I work, we publish a quarterly magazine about West Virginia
traditional life (Goldenseal, check it out at
http://www.wvculture.org/goldenseal), and I often have to go photograph old
folks and ask them if they have any old photos of themselves or their
families, and the answer I often get is "We were too poor to have a camera.
We don't have many pictures." So some of us have a different idea of what
consitutes "poor."

So why are we concerned with these people with regards to digital image
files? Are we afraid they'll buy a digital camera, save the files to floppy
and then not be able to retrieve them 10 years from now? Are we worried they
will create some great art that will be lost forever?

As for institutions, they have rules to follow that means they have to adapt
with technology changes to remain compliant. Our agency also houses the
State Archives, and the law says that all agencies have to turn over the
records to us eventually. That means they have to be maintained in an
accessible format. The Director is constantly worried about memos via email,
because he thinks we won't get that stuff, but witness the recent email flap
at the White House, and the Microsoft emails that figured in the court case,
and you'll see that this concern IS being addressed.

| Most of the people that I am referring to are those who are
|small part-time or full-time hobbyists or businesspersons who earn some or
|all of their livelihood by selling prints out of art fairs, street bazaars,
|storefront, etc. to ordinary people on the street.  They typically cannot
|afford to get some one like you to archive their work and maintain their
|files migrating them to new updated media on a timely manner but have to do
|it themselves.  Typically, they do not have the time to do that
|and make and
|sell new images; nor do they have the time and energy or income to keep on
|top of the technology even on a two or three year upgrade cycle.  In many
|cases they do not have any downstream employees to whom they can
|provide the
|replaced computer equipment so it can be effectively used. When
|they replace
|equipment, the old equipment is either given away, thrown out, put into
|storage.  I would suspect that most of the people I am referring to are not
|even networked but have one or more unnetworked systems.

Now this is what I think we WERE discussing, and I disagree entirely.
Computers are TOOLS, just like a press, or paints, and if you use those
tools it is YOUR responsibility, not mine, to make sure you know what you're
doing. If it's only for fun, then who cares? But if it's for business, act
like a business. I screw up all the time, and I blame nobody but myself. Not
the government, not you, not Epson, just me.

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