A brand-new peril
There was a time when if your telephone broke, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that you couldn’t listen to your music.
Similarly, if your typewriter jammed, you would’nt expect to be unable to watch television.
I believe no single object or device should have that amount of responsibility.
Information is precious, that’s why we created ways of holding on to it… at first we only had a little, so it was really important. This information was carved in stone and painted in secret places hidden away from most of the world. Then, we had a little more information and not all of it was that important, so we wrote it down at first on scrolls, but this proved too cumbersome when dealing in larger volumes of information, so the scroll was upgraded to the book.
The great thing about the book was that not only did it have a reasonable shelf-life (I’m sure there’s a pun in there somewhere), but with the invention of the printing press, you could always create another one when the old one disintergrated.
Now, however, we have tons of information and more by the day. Most of it is fairly useless though, so we archive it with a slightly more careless attitude, we store it on short-life electronical goods and ‘disposable’ media.
I do hope that we don’t lose the ability to distinguish between which information needs to be looked after and which can be lost without too many consequences.
Technorati Tags: ipod, technology, books, information, webcomic
I do worry about this happening. Mostly because it used to happen to me pretty regularly. But I’ve had my current computer for a few years now and it hasn’t died once. I think it must be due to my having learned to maintain a functioning computer even if it’s also a dysfunctional mess…which every computer I’ve ever encountered is.
That reminds me. I need to back up everything on this new computer… I haven’t backed up my comic since switching to digital art.
LOL, that is fairly true.
I think we have too much information thrown at us each day – most of it rubbish – the problem being you have to read it first to know that it is rubbish. Precious time is wasted. I once went on a time management training day and the advice given there was not even to open junk mail but to bin it. Today we would recycle it though.
this is so true.
a discreet Blur reference well done.
Indeed it is, well spotted.
I tried to remember the other how I used to survive without cellular phones, I hate to admit it but I have become so reliant on my phone.