There's another point too, which is even more important -- survival of data. I have a number of books which were printed well before I was born, I bet you and most other readers have similar (if not older). Modern media has a planned life of at most a few decades, and that's physical life, never mind the fact that Word 2000 can't even read Word files from 10 years before because all the formats have changed. It depends on backups, and even the adherrents of the "put everything on CD/DVD" school say that you will have to not only back up but also change the format of your data every 10 years or so to the new versions.
Civilisation -- real civilisation, not just "the art of living in cities" (and we don't even seem to do that too happily) -- has depended and does depend on time-binding, learning from past generations. It's what distinguishes us from (most of) the animals, we can look at picures and tell the stories about our ancestors hundreds of years ago and learn from them. If your family photos have a lifetime of only decades, what will the next generation see?
There's another aspect, too. Gates's empire is built around constant 'upgrades'. To an extent this is inevitable, technology changes and sometimes it even gets better. However, a lot of the music industry is also built around 'upgrades' -- the latest cover of a song, rereleases "tidied up" and "remastered", etc. Again, this is not always a bad thing -- until they start changing the material. Do it with books, and, well, a few words might be 'upgraded' each time, until you have "Thou shalt commit adultery" and "Three Hundred and Seven years ago our ancestors said that we should all be slaves". Just a few 'upgrades', rendering things in "modern language" a few times, perhaps, and Hamlet's speach might be "To be loyal to my country, or to be a traitor, that is the question; whether it will pay more to suffer a bit of hardship to thwart the terrorists or to oppose my democratically elected government..."
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branchandroot
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Date: 2005-10-29 08:17 am (UTC)Civilisation -- real civilisation, not just "the art of living in cities" (and we don't even seem to do that too happily) -- has depended and does depend on time-binding, learning from past generations. It's what distinguishes us from (most of) the animals, we can look at picures and tell the stories about our ancestors hundreds of years ago and learn from them. If your family photos have a lifetime of only decades, what will the next generation see?
There's another aspect, too. Gates's empire is built around constant 'upgrades'. To an extent this is inevitable, technology changes and sometimes it even gets better. However, a lot of the music industry is also built around 'upgrades' -- the latest cover of a song, rereleases "tidied up" and "remastered", etc. Again, this is not always a bad thing -- until they start changing the material. Do it with books, and, well, a few words might be 'upgraded' each time, until you have "Thou shalt commit adultery" and "Three Hundred and Seven years ago our ancestors said that we should all be slaves". Just a few 'upgrades', rendering things in "modern language" a few times, perhaps, and Hamlet's speach might be "To be loyal to my country, or to be a traitor, that is the question; whether it will pay more to suffer a bit of hardship to thwart the terrorists or to oppose my democratically elected government..."