Victim of Culture

Going digital for the short term

I sit here listening to Aretha Franklin’s “Think” while writing this, and it makes me think (you should have seen it coming).  While I have little doubt that my children or grandchildren will still get the pleasure of hearing Ms. Franklin’s voice, I do wonder about those three, four, or ten generations down the road.

There is something reassuring about knowing that I’ve read the same novels that people two hundred years ago read.  I’ve read the same poetry and plays people five hundred years ago read.  It ties me to the past and gives me a sense of place in time, which by itself is a bit of a difficult concept to grasp.  To think that, at best, I might make it a century in a recorded history that goes back thousands of years.  Sharing some of the same experiences as those in the past gives me a guide rope through time—not to get too overly philosophical about it all.  But will future generations retain such ties?

The question was spurred by a new book scanner that can scan at 1,000 fps.  In essence, the scanner can simply slip through the pages of a book and scan as it goes.  It’s just a prototype for now, but it cuts the laborious task of scanning books down to a more manageable task.  And that seems like a good thing.  But I wonder  if the entire world going digital is such a good thing?

Make no mistake, I love the fact that I can access almost any information from anywhere within seconds.  The Internet and the information availability is generally a good thing, I think.  What troubles me is the idea that new ideas and thoughts, including music and books, might go straight to digital and skip the physical stage.  For instance, copies of ancient Egyptian writings have managed to navigate their way through time to us today because a physical copy existed.  Civilizations and cultures have risen and fallen, but those words remained because there was something physical to dig up and put your hands on.  Will the same be true of digital information?

Suppose the worst case scenario and the world descends into nuclear war, or perhaps just an electromagnetic war of disabling the other side’s infrastructure of communications.  Where would all the blogs of the world be, including this one?  While I doubt the loss of this particular blog would be much of a loss to the annals of time, it is true that many of today’s best young writers are doing much of their writing exclusively online.  What happens when it isn’t there?

Of course, not all writings of the Egyptians have made it to modern day.  And while much is exclusively online, surely print books will remain for some of the creamiest of the crop.  But it does give me pause to consider that while I may be connected to the past, I may in fact be cutting my own cord to the future simply be hitting enter.

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