Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
This is a common refrain, but I think its spurious. After all throughout history the fraction of society's total information output that is preserved has been increasing, not decreasing. Sure a paper book or a stone tablet will last longer than a CD or a disk drive, but that doesn't mean much. The cost/difficulty of making copies of paper books/stone tablets means that most of them wont be preserved over the long term, while digital information will.
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Don't get me wrong, my being here is proof enough of my enthusiasm towards the ebook.
I don't know how long you've had computers but I've been using them since the first personnal computers in the early eighties. And I have no programming experience and no curiosity about it whatsoever, just basic tinkering abilities, barely over average.
What I can tell you is that you can not trust digital information as it is to survive as it is. The digital world is controlled. It can be changed and outdated any time they wish it to as they have done often enough. I could enumerate the list of devices that lie on top of the pile of useless computer junk and talk of each one until tomorrow but I won't. Instead I'll tell you about the software, OS, and data. There is nothing of the data from all periods that has survived more than two generations (6 years). Some of it I was able to transfer with great difficulty. Most of it is still on their support media and the devices used to read it no longer works. Do they still make 5 1/4" readers? The 3 1/2 400k can't be read by the one I have in my still functionning outdated computer. Even if it could it would tell me "Can not find the application that created the file. Would you like to search for it over Internet?" Most every creation I've done is locked out in that old technology. Some of it is lost and I have absolutely no way of retrieving it.
Data is trapped by hardware.
You might say that I'm exagerating and that today's digital control is far more stable and reliable. Well! I'll answer "Let's talk about it in twenty years"
By then, computers will be smaller than an SD card with hundreds of terrabytes of info that will still be incapable of reading the beautiful drawing I made and stored on that 400k floppy or that Bernouilly Zip drive.(I should have done it on canvas) That DVD vault of pictures will have corroded to crumbs as many CD Roms have started to do, and most magnetic based support will be jumbles of useless partly erased garble. But that book I have and treasure will still be there... I'm making sure that its value is understood.
As long as we rely on profiteering companies for research and development of digital media we can not have the stability and durability to "preserve". I am not against them, they roll the economy, employ a lot of us and bring us a lot of entertaining toys. There is a lot more to humanity than that and it
has to be preserved correctly. Or has it been decided that it is'nt worth it and has to die off? Who, tell me who... has the right to decide? The E-bael we criticize is a symbol. It's a bright representation of the state of anarchy the digital world lays in. We're so busy hacking and working that we don't have time to notice the big picture?
They like it so. It suits them pretty well if I may add.
The state of flux in which floats the Digital World is very different from the material world we're trying to fit in it. Water and earth. It's simple as so. Waves and waves of changes just like fashion. Someone said of fashion "The proof that it's useless is that we have to change it all the time"
. Could it be the same as what we store on digital support? In many ways, yes and it should be! New voices and new ways of doing things make the world evolve. Artist and designers' work, even software are an expression of humanity that warrants preservation for examination by further generations. (If we don't kill this planet first
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My message is this. "Don't rely on just one way of writing down a message, whatever it is. There is a reason for everything and everything deserves to last."