What About the Afterlife?

What do the above have in common? They're all 1,000 years old or older (in the case of the Cuneiform stone, close to 4,000 years old). As the publishing world breathlessly awaits the latest eDevelopment, I find myself wondering about the future of today's books. I embrace digital technology every day, enjoy eBooks and believe they have a variety of uses and loads of potential for readers and writers.

However. Ask my audio engineer hubster how easily it is to get music or audio off an old 8-track tape or cassette. How many times has he tried to rescue something from a reel-to-reel tape, only to have it disintigrate? How many records has he painstakingly restored with a laser turntable, to find some parts just can't be decoded? DAT tape? Hardly anyone has DAT players anymore. CDs certainly aren't permanent.

Even in today's eBook realm, not every book can be read on every device due to the differences in software, hardware and formatting (.azf? .opf? tr2? chm? PDF?). Will our ancestors a thousand years from now have the technology to scan these binary bits when our current technology seems as ancient as a stone and chisel?

What do you think? How permanent are today's books—digital or print (those not published on acid-free or high-quality paper)?

Comments

[Joe Barone]

I wonder how many of those stone tablets survived in relation to how many were made? And we all know the stories of shepherds using some of the scrolls from Qumran and other such finds as kindling to start fires.

I suspect there is a chance that a larger remnant of what is written today will survive than what has survived from the past.

[BV Lawson]

I do hope you're right. There will be "translations," of course, i.e. we had analog VHS copies of movies that came in DVD format when VHS was essentially abandoned, which was followed by new versions of those same movies in Blu-ray, and there will be something else come along after that. Still, when one uses one's imagination and tries to look ahead 1,000 years, there may be a lot of what's created today that doesn't survive such techno-translation. Wish I had a time machine (I think; don't want to run into any Morlocks).

[Yvette]

Honestly, I think NOTHING is meant to last forever. If we have some of these stone tablets and ancient 'papers' left it is probably because of luck. As for today's work all I can think about is the many films that have already disintegrated and it's not even a hundred years since movies became a 'standard' thing or anyone even thought of trying to keep them for posterity.
I think, probably, whatever is scanned and copied onto computer will probably last as long as we last. We are not, after all, meant to last forever either.

[BV Lawson]

Unfortunately, Yvette, nothing indeed lasts forever (even universes), but I'm awfully glad the works of Shakespeare are still around (among others). Hope they'll still be read a thousand years from now, too!

[Yvette]

AND the paintings and sculpture of Michelangelo and the paintings of DaVinci and...well, I agree with you. Shakespeare will live as long as the human race lives, I think. I believe.