Zero Decade: Paper
Twenty years ago I was one of the first private individuals to own a laser printer. In the early days of desktop publishing there was a steady stream of people through my home needing hard copy. I bought a box of copier paper every week. It was quite a profitable business until prices came down and everyone else could buy one. There was talk of a paperless office, but since the dominant form of communication was paper I did not see how that would happen, until the rise of e-mail. The more people had it, the less paper they used. Five years ago I bought my last laser printer and my last box of paper. Text from DJCline.com
I still accumulated printers. Every time I bought a camera or a scanner they threw in an inkjet printer. The problem was that most people viewed images online. The obvious sign that things had changed was the sale of digital displays shaped like picture frames. When people wanted hard copy, it was for largely ceremonial purposes and they went to Kinkos. Text from DJCline.com
The problem with electronic documents is that they require electricity to read them. I don’t think burning coal to save trees is a long term solution. Other problems are digital rights management and proprietary formats that require specific devices to see the content. If the power goes out, having the Library of Congress on your e-reader will not help future generations. Text from DJCline.com
There is nothing like reading original historical documents to get an idea of what times were like. Hiding documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls can give new insights into current conflicts. Clay tablets will tell you people cheated on their taxes. Stone carvings will tell you about eclipses. Illuminated manuscripts will tell you about plagues. Printed atlases will tell you about how people literally saw the world. Text from DJCline.com
The Long Now Foundation is working on the problem by etching very tiny text on metal disks and storing them underground in the desert. If our descendants have really good eyesight and can read, they will be in great shape, but these are rather impersonal documents. I’m interested the personal accounts. Text from DJCline.com
History comes alive when it is told by individuals. Historians are spying for the future. Herodotus, Pliny, Chaucer, Boswell and hundreds of other are great resources for historians. They wrote so well that their work was translated from language to language and media to media. Aristotle returned to European academia after being translated from Greek to Arabic to Latin and from scrolls to books. If you want your work to be read in the future, distribute it multiple media and different languages. You may not only get the last word, it may be the only word on a subject. Text from DJCline.com
They say history is written by the winners. It is certainly studied by them.
Posted by dj in Commentary []