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| Symbolic. |
In this 21st Century, where technology has accelerated to its limits, or even past the limits, the humanity is offered a ‘paperless’ era; an era that is said to be eco-friendly by limiting paper usage to minimum. The synonym of this would be ‘digitalization’, where important papers and documents would be transformed into digital files that will ease the delivery and distribution of such. Sure, it cuts modern companies various delivery costs and paper purchase every year… but what about home assets that have existed decades ago… or even older? Do we need to digitalize it like other modern-day documents? I’m trying to offer you guys an insight about this, as I’m being told by my parents to digitalize such assets and store it somewhere that I still don’t know…
You’re welcome to read it after the break 🙂
Alright, to make things easier, I’d like to split this post into two big parts: Aye and Nay. Aye is like the pros of going digital, while Nay is the complete opposite. Please bear in mind that although I’m trying to think as objective as possible, these are still opinions, and might contain subjectivity in my mind. I apologize should any of these would offend you.
Aye:
- Papers and other physical materials degrade. Even if you have laminated your documents (putting it between two heated plastics that firmly stick onto each other), its material can still degrade, especially if exposed to water. By going digital, you can be sure that the file will stay there, as long as you take care of the medium well.
- By going digital, you’ve freed up some space in your room, as well as having virtually countless backups.
Nay:
- Some documents, although a decade-or-more-year-old, has some kind of holographic stickers that proves its legality. Unfortunately, scanners don’t keep these special stickers. They’ll just be displayed as bright silver ornaments in the document. In the future, if these documents are requested, you won’t be able to hand it in, since its legality will be questioned.
- The media used to store your documents is still exposed to damage, especially water, drop, or even dust. Once you lose or break or accidentally lose your data, it’s all over.
- Regarding to the previous point, you might want to choose Cloud Storage such as Google Drive, SugarSync, DropBox, etc. However, I, as an individual, strongly oppose to this, as I don’t have any warranty of security. Online servers, however strong the security solution it deploys, still has an exploit that is waiting to be used. When that unfortunate time comes, you can only hope that it isn’t your account that was going to be hacked…