My tech resolution for 2021

I know Hanukkah just started and Christmas is still over a week away but I've been thinking about 2021 often. Perhaps it's the unprecedented year that 2020 turned out to be and the hope of 2021 being better. So today I want to talk about my numero uno tech resolution for 2021.

For most technology related tasks like backing up the data on my computer or keeping the various files on my computer organized, I have a proclivity for well-defined processes. However, such predisposition has evaded my conscience when it comes to the curation of digital photos/videos taken with my digital cameras and smartphones. Simply, I have been importing all the photos/videos I take onto my computer indiscriminately – i.e. the good, the bad and the ugly – and they take residence in my portfolio.

For me, the risk of losing 20 years worth of "Kodak moments" captured and saved in the digital world is mitigated as photos/videos are covered by the aforementioned backup process so that is not a concern.

If you don't curate your photo/videos and instead just import, aka dump, everything onto your computer's storage or upload them to your cloud storage like I've been doing, precious storage space locally or in the cloud is taken up unnecessarily. Although buying additional storage media like an external hard drive for local storage is getting cheaper while the capacity offered is cavernous, why pay for storage space for unwanted photos/videos to begin with? The same is true for cloud storage. If you use Google Photos, Google's cloud storage for photos/videos, they recently announced that they are discontinuing the free unlimited storage of high quality photos/videos in mid-2021. 

The other challenge I've been encountering for a couple years now is how long and tedious it can be when looking for that needle-in-the-haystack photo/video. Although the volume of photos/videos I need to wade through in my storage to find something may be an aberration rather than the norm, I still recommend curating photos/videos even if you just started taking photos/videos with your smartphone recently. It's better to build good habits early on before it gets out of hand.

Why can it get out of hand, you ask? With analog cameras and even digital cameras, taking pictures was a planned endeavor. With the ubiquity of a smartphone, along with its decent capability for taking photos/videos, I do encounter exponentially more "Kodak moments." Also, I want to share those moments or chronicles of my life with family members halfway around the world (which is of course made possible by the internet, aka the cloud) so the number of photos/videos increases rapidly.

I'm sharing my 2021 new year's tech resolution so you don't have to attend the school of hard knocks. So how many photos/videos do I have to curate? Last time I checked in early December, it was up to 310,879 photos/videos in 8,436 folders!