The Impermenance

The internet, digital media, and loss

Hello friends, foes, and love interests,

Have you ever mourned the Library of Alexandria? Well, your lack of physical media is contributing to a modern renditon.

Last week I posted an Instagram reel showing off a literal handful of digital cameras I had as a child. I was planning to use these cameras again, but I stumbled across one that quickly became a mystery.

The camera had a small centimeter-by-centimeter screen, which displayed only two letters to describe the action the camera was about to perform. It also did not hold an SD or memory card, according to Reddit, and held the files on an internal memory drive that could only be accessed by plugging the camera into a computer with the appropriate software.

I dug through a big mess of cables in my room to find the right one for the camera. This is after the great cable purge of 2021, in which I was so bored during a period of lockdown that I went through all of my old electronics and threw out cables I thought I would never need again. Luckily, I still had an applicable cable, but it was a USBC to USBC cable. That is pretty rare, especially now. I plugged the camera into my new laptop, and nothing happened.

With some internet sleuthing and reverse image search, I eventually learned that the camera needed to be plugged into a computer with a TWAIN driver for the camera to be recognized as a device. So now I need a rare cable AND a historic piece of software because the camera is from around 2008. Luckily, my family holds on to old tech for moments just like this. We found a computer that should be able to recognize the camera once plugged in, but further searching after discovering the name of the camera led me to realize that there is additional software needed. The original camera, a CyberPix 2-1, came with a CD drive that I have no recollection of. This allowed your computer to read and edit the files on the camera. There's a possibility that that CD is still in my house, but my parents also did a great pandemic purge.

I later learned on Reddit that the CyberPix, and other cheap children’s cameras of the time, needs a constant flow of power to keep the memory active. This means that when the camera battery dies, so do the photos.

Years of hiding in the bottom of a drawer destroyed the photos on my CyberPix. Although I am disappointed I will never see them, I struggle to mourn what I never really had.

The image below is the exact camera I am talking about, though regrettably, I got the stripey case stuck on it and eventually purged the two other (much cooler) “skins” it came with.

Image of CyberPix for sale on Ebay (Source)

What I do mourn, though, is all of the files, photos, songs, school projects, and junk stored on computers in my house that I will eventually lose. I already can't use my old Kobo e-reader that I voraciously read real and fanfiction novels on. The software is too old and it can barely turn on anymore. I worry about what tech I have now that I will forget about, only remembering the importance or joy contained within the files when it is too late. When there is no way for me to access them anymore, and when I cannot remember the passwords.