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I KNEW it!!
This is horrifying, truly. If the only version of a text is electronic, then it can be altered or completely eliminated with a few keystrokes.
This is something Dr. Bowdler could only have dreamed of…
I confess I have been trying to winnow through our books, y’know, lighten the inevitable burden on my daughter when I die. But that stops today. At least they’ll exist as long as I do.
“Project Gutenberg”? THIS is Project BADenburg.
I’ve always said we’re NOT living Orwell’s 1984, but Huxley’s Brave New World. Therein, any and all venerable literary and historical content is banned. Why? It’s anti-consumeristic, for one thing: a book can last for centuries. And texts like Shakespeare and the Bible expose deep human passions which might —routinely did—lead to social instability.
Bring on the Soma…..
Dear @jabowery , tell me: do you think there’s any way this can be stopped?
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The Library of Congress funded to transport all of these unbound books from their digitization mills to various underground salt mines, and/or perhaps replacing the retirement records that are now stored underground for civil servants?
But it goes beyond hard copy. For some time, I’ve been of the opinion that the attack on Internet history should have been prevented by legislation.
It is absolutely obscene that some individual can, because they said something that they don’t want in the public record to embarrass them today, essentially burn the Library of the Usenet to the ground.
But, of course, I am being naive about the motives for such obscenity.
And, of course, it is also obscene that the Internet Archive in general isn’t protected by the Library of Congress along with the hardcopy now being shredded.
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This got Elon Musk’s positive attention although he doesn’t say what he will do to preserve the rare books once they are saved intact.
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OK, dumb question, and yes the questions not asked are the dumb ones, but how are the books stored digitally? There are a few cataclysmic things that could happen.
Total war to bring the civilization into the stone age and make them inaccessible because we don’t have the electrical power to fire up the data banks?
A not so distant star going nova creating a spinning neutron star that wipes out all of out stored data?
Or our own AI’s decide that all this data is contradictory to a stable existence and erases it all?
This brings to mind, but in a modern version, the episode of the Twilight Zone where;
“” A henpecked book lover finds himself blissfully alone with his books after a nuclear war.
But then breaks his glasses and can’t read anymore.
Ref: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734683/
If you never viewed it, here it is in a nutshell,
Video Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLoNGRVeC7Y
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Exactly. Decades ago I read a piece in American Scholar. The author said his dissertation was preserved in some kinda format he could no,longer access. It might as well never have existed. He wrote—and I’ve been parroting the mantra ever since:
“ ‘Electronic storage’ is an oxymoron.”
We don’t have to Imagine a future where CDs, for example, are anything but enigmatic sun catchers. It’s here.
The thing about a codex, though, is it can always potentially be DE-coded. It’s designed by, and designed to be read by, the human mind. The code may be lost, but a Champollion might, will, come along in each and any generation.
“..Nor shall Death brag thou wandrest in his shade
When, in eternal LINES, to Time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see:
SO long lives THIS—-and this gives life to thee!”
And:
“…My love looks fresh, and Death to ME subscribes
Since, ‘spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme
While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes.
And thou, in this, shalt find thy monument
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.”
So far, the Bard is proven right about the immortality of his verse. But now we seem to rushing to bend to the tyranny of the moribund “dull and speechless tribes”.
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Hypatia, you are not alone in wanting to have an unalterable print copy of key documents. Here is an interesting validation of humanity’s preference for a permanent record – even on such a transient medium as newsprint.
“A pair of front-page special reports honoring Chinese mathematician Wang Hong’s historic Fields Medal victory have ignited an unprecedented nationwide scramble for physical newspapers, triggering a rare revival of print media in China’s digital age. …”
“… The special coverage has fueled a frenzy among readers. Secondhand sellers have reportedly listed the two print issues at marked-up prices ranging from 20 to 100 yuan ($2.9 to $14.7) per copy, while internet users have dubbed the phenomenon a rare “print-media spectacle” in an increasingly digital world. …”
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Evans’s research for “Blacklisted by History” involved having to track down newspaper articles the hardcopies of which were not only difficult to find but in some cases appeared to have been deliberately destroyed to cover up what actually happened during the so-called “McCarthy Era”.
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