Paul of A Crank’s Progress ruminates on the death of film, informatively and (despite his self-perception that the post is long) with admirable efficiency.

While I certainly understand the potential threat to our visible heritage in the disappearance of photographic prints from our patrimony, I myself celebrate it as one less burden to drag toward the grave. As someone who has seen the surfeit of family prints commonly available in any given antique store, it’s clear to me that people never intended to keep the images for the ages. As a member of a family that inherited a large shoebox full of unlabeled shots dating back to the 1840s and realizing we had no way of identifying the subjects, it’s equally clear to me that the archival problem had us beaten two generations ago.

Flickr, the visual future of our history is in your hands.