As a publisher, Emmaus Way LLC has produced books that are primarily in the biographical or historical venues. Historically, content for such books comes from a client’s personal collection of materials such a diaries, journals, newsprint clippings, photo albums, correspondence, audio and videotape recordings, etc. In other words, from material that is usually paper-based, because that’s how records were kept and memories were preserved. People have always valued historical/biographical information. Today, companies such as Legacy Box and Life Book Memoirs offer services to preserve recordings in a digital format or transform recorded memories supplied by the customer into a book format.
In recent decades, with the increasing usage of digital technology – such as computers, digital cameras, smart phones, digital recorders and other devices – has seen “history” being preserved in digital format. This is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because of the ease with which events can be documented, even by young children. A curse because we are no longer constrained by the capacity of the recording media. No limit of 36 photos on a roll of film: digital devices can store tens of thousands of photos on a media the size of your thumbnail. Likewise, no limit of 1 or 2 hours for videotaping: smart phones and digital video recorders are limited only by their storage capacity (or battery power).
The first computers could store about 1,500 (1.5 Kilobyte) characters (“bytes”) on a “floppy” diskette. That soon grew to 20,000,000 (20 Megabytes) and then 100 MB (an Iomega Zip diskette). Then 20,000,000,000 (20 Gigabytes) on a hard-drive was followed by 40, 80, 256 and 512 GB. Now, 1-, 2- and even 4-Terabyte (TB) and greater capacities are not uncommon. This amount of storage was available only to large companies like Walmart decades ago, and at great cost in terms of dollars and space. Now, the average consumer can buy a pocket-sized 4 TB drive for a few hundred dollars.
This growth is a consequence of a self-feeding cycle: users seek more storage (which used to be pages in a photo album or scrapbook) so technology seeks to provide it. But users keep wanting more, and technology keeps delivering. This has obsoleted the old concepts of physical storage in scrapbooks and photo albums. Now, depending on the generation to which someone belongs, digital storage is used increasingly often. That presents a challenge to anyone who wants to “recover,” collect, organize and preserve their historical “digital artifacts.”
Comteq Consulting (CC) was formed as a division of Emmaus Way LLC to help. Our representative and clients are people we refer to as “Digital Data Archaeologists.” Together we work to uncover the past which may be found in many types of “artifacts.” These include the traditional forms mentioned earlier. Targets for discovery include floppy discs, hard drives, removable media such as USB thumb-drives, CD/DVDs and other forms. Comteq’s consultant works with you, the Client, to identify, prioritize, examine, analyze and report on the artifacts in your “collection” which we refer to as the "site." Industry-recognized forensic tools are used during exploration.
Our consultant initially depends on your description and assessment of what artifacts may be hidden in your site. A mutual understanding is documented that governs the scope and expectations of our work together.
Then the digging, and anticipation, begins!
