I suggested that we put all the family photos in an album, rather than having them strewn all over the place in photo folders around the house.

She suggested scanning them into the computer and building a photo album that way. While that may be appealing from a digitization standpoint, there's something fun and exciting about passing a photo album down from generation to generation. Also, computer mediums change over time, including computer media, so those CD-ROM photo albums may not be readable in 5-10 years.

-5 Years? I doubt it. 10 years, then convert them in 5 years.

There are even companies that will convert wax cylinder recordings to MP3
(or any other format). I'm working on coverting a bunch of LPs to MP3 right now.

I cant think of a major audio or visual recording format or medium that has been completely lost.

-I already6 shifted a bunch of my photos to DVD's if only for sharing with others. drop it in a DVD player push play and let it go for about 5 minutes or so each.