Thank you VertovSvilova for such a comprehensive and spot on answer!
My takeaway is that analog or digital, it takes resources to ensure archival longevity (money, equipment, time, planning, intent). Most analog content owned by many of us is not correctly archived. I'm sure some are better than other, but over time, priorities change, ownership changes, and preservation usually ends up coming down to some lowest denominator of money/value/effort.
Digital makes content generation easier. Archiving, in part through distribution/dispersal is also easier. The whole concept of the original is irrelevant unless your business model is based on maintaining scarcity to increase value. The cost of entry to decent digital archiving is low, meaning more likelihood of doing it. That's not to say it's perfect, as the article outlines. And I agree, it's still largely the individual's responsibility to ensure data is maintained and migrated.
I believe in the shorter term, like 30-50 years, there is an advantage to digital, in that it is less susceptible to 'general environmental' degradation (shoebox in the attic/heat/humidity/mold) that affects analog images, primarily color dye based images. Nor is it generally susceptible to loss through duplication/reproduction, though granted, issues of file corruption and digital rot are valid concerns. Perhaps its biggest advantage, IMO, is space efficiency. I love prints, but storage is such a pain. File formats such as Jpeg, Tiff and DNG have been around a relatively long time now, are common and are well understood. 30-50 years is decent since that will span most people's lifetimes and give them many opportunities to revisit their photos, videos, etc. and enjoy them with the same physical properties (color, tonality, sound, etc.) as the day they were created. After that, it's in someone else's hands anyway.
Just recently I saw something about FaceBook allowing users to designate 'inheritance' of accounts. Google has a similar capacity in that a longer period of account dormancy, such as when you die, can be set up to automatically forward your credentials to a designate. While this won't guarantee continuation of someone's archive, it's a sign that digitally based entities are starting to take these points into consideration. In the future you and all your relatives will likely inherit uncle Harry's media archive without any physical transaction. And there will be provisions to transfer it also to some sort of public entity.
Ultimately, this is only of any good if society continues to maintain a certain technological standard, let alone manages to continue at all.
