I've always been someone who's embraced new technology with regards to photography. Clearly these days we live in a digital world with our photos living on facebook or instagram rather than on your wall, or on smartphones rather than in your wallet. Because of the digital world, it makes sense to think all you would ever need is a CD of images from a photography session. It might sound odd, but I believe that the print is more forward thinking than a digital file.
Thinking back about technology there's always been the issue of older technology not working in the future. No one uses floppy disks, or ZIP disks these days. CDs & DVDs are still used, but Apple no longer puts an optical drive in their laptops (trust me they are a forward thinking company), so I would expect that technology to go away. Even CDs & DVDs have a life span, so even if you have a computer with a drive, the CD or DVD might no longer be readable. USB flash drives are becoming the new standard, but I've experienced USB flash drives fail. Even if files are on the computers hard drives, those drives can and will fail at some point.
All of this is the reason for backups, or saving files to the cloud. Even if it is not an issue while it's maintained under your care, what happens when it no longer is? Will your family maintain and store your digital files long after your life is over?
With all of this, it's even more unlikely in the future that there will be photographic discoveries in the attic for future generations. It's unlikely future grandchildren will find an old CD, and be excited when they have no device to play it, or go through the effort and then find it unreadable and go any further.
Now consider how a print, canvas, or album will always be accessible in the future for generations to come. Why would you settle for anything else?
That's a smart way of thinking about it.