This interesting article over on the Sci-Fi.com site brought up a point that would never, in a million years, have occurred to me.
That was an interesting key bit.
That was an interesting key bit.
Publishing & The Apocalypse
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It would not be the first time printed materials disappeared. Some materials only managed to survive by chance or because they were copied laboriously by monks. Many of those were altered and Christianized during transcription. While we might be able to tell which parts were altered, we may never know what the original actually said.
Material which we printed and forgot or put through the shredder and sent to recycling might be all that are left of our literature if an apocalyptic event happened.
Material which we printed and forgot or put through the shredder and sent to recycling might be all that are left of our literature if an apocalyptic event happened.
Bah, just get the Motomaster Eliminator and solar panel from Canadian Tire.
But I guess that wouldn't work in the case of meteor impacts or nuclear war. Damn.
In this case, I'd be more concerned about finding hot water for my hour long showers than how I would read my ebooks, though.
But I guess that wouldn't work in the case of meteor impacts or nuclear war. Damn.
In this case, I'd be more concerned about finding hot water for my hour long showers than how I would read my ebooks, though.
Perhaps a return to the verbal retelling of tales wouldn't be such a bad thing? We'll never know what was lost when Hitler burned books. I often imagine in that pile of burning ash was a masterpiece that would have changed the world, had it been saved.
That said, I do print off my WIP periodically, in case the apocalypse hits my computer first
That said, I do print off my WIP periodically, in case the apocalypse hits my computer first
I don't think it would, particularly. It would certainly simplify things and I'm often in favor of that.
The article caught my attention, because as a rabid fan of A Canticle for Leibowitz, I've read things along this line before. Just hadn't actually considered it, which is fun to do.
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Another issue of epublishing that you rarely see discussed: changing formats and advancing technology. You can still read a book that was written in the Middle Ages. But will the people of 20 years from now still be able to read an ebook in today's formats?
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Ha, I have a masterpiece written with “Perfect Writer” on a CPM machine and saved on 5 ¼ one sided floppys (180 kb). My Kapro is dead, so it’ll never see the light of day.
It's a very good point. Hell, I can't even get old files from my Windows 3.1 computer to talk to my current machine. I have stories that I wrote in Microsoft Works, years ago, that now don't even access in modern Works.
...
Something that does make me happy, though, is that if there were a hypothetical apocalypse that shut down all electricity and disabled computers...I would still be able to comfortably write, by hand, with pen and paper or maybe an old typewriter. I can do it now, and innately, this is the reason I do it. Not because I'm sitting around going "Aye, the apocalypse is coming!" but because I really, really like being able to write without being dependent on any particular device.
Some "portable hyperbooks" use no more power than does the Grundig hand-crank radio, but in such a situation I might listen to the radio to hear where the next missile hits rather than wiring the reader to the crank for reading fiction, OTOH I can understand there are some readers who are more hardcore than me.
Got magnet wire?
http://otherpower.com
I can imagine a few decades or centuries later when high-tech civilization is rebuilt, they'll be able to rebuild disk drive electronics and read hard disks' contents. They'll surely be quite amused at the crap we wrote.
Got magnet wire?
http://otherpower.com
I can imagine a few decades or centuries later when high-tech civilization is rebuilt, they'll be able to rebuild disk drive electronics and read hard disks' contents. They'll surely be quite amused at the crap we wrote.
There was a Scientific American article on this issue, perhaps 20 years ago. Vurtually no one uses CP/M or 8-inch drives anymore, or even 20 years ago (these were "popular" among the few thousands of microcomputer enthusiasts in the late 01970's). While you can probably get several free CP/M emulators for Windows on the web, you can't read an 8-inch floppy disk without: 1. an 8-inch floppy drive, 2. the proper electronic interface, and 3. the proper "driver" software to access the drive. You can probably find someone to do file format conversion for you, but it will take some googling to find them, and it will surely cost.
Reading a book from centuries ago has its own problems. I recall in high school English class, the teacher played an LP of someone speaking Beowulf in the accent believed to have been used at the time. I understood almost none of it, nor could I do any better with the original writing in the textbook. Okay, ISTR Beowulf is at least as old as some of the oldest remaining books, but it points out that making sense of older printed matter might also need a "format conversion specialist."
But if your book is "epublished" on a web page, it may well be available and readable for many decades. If you leave it up for only a short while, it may still get saved at archive.org - my old website is saved there. The problem future readers may have in reading it is the archaic English you use. With the popularity of "The Interweb" and instant communication, language is changing faster than ever. KWIM?
Being the sf nerd that I am I am actually trying to get a human powered computer just in case some sort of major event does shut the power grid down for an extended period of time. I can't write without a computer!
I've also read articles on how reading may be obsolete (or a lost art) in 25-50 years as computers do more and more things verbally and icons replace much of what we use words for today.
I've also read articles on how reading may be obsolete (or a lost art) in 25-50 years as computers do more and more things verbally and icons replace much of what we use words for today.
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As a guy who writes a lot of comic strips I certainly hope not. Just noting what I read.
The question is, how long into the apocalypse will you go using your paper to write on, instead of . . . you know.
2-ply?
2-ply?
I won't argue, but rather I'll ask who or what will do the reading. Computers that do optical character recognition and speech synthesis have been around for a while now (ask Stevie Wonder), and will become much cheaper and more ubiquitous.
On the flip side of this, if you spoke Icelandic, then you could comfortably ready the original sagas, because the language hasn't changed hugely in all this time. I'm not arguing, just noting.
It doesn't become obsolete, but it does wax and wane over time. Right now, we're doing pretty good, reading-wise. There's more people reading now than 200 years ago, 500 years ago, etc. Will this change in a 100 years?
It seems unthinkable, but it's really and truly not. We have a complacent short term memory (culturally). It's like hearing kids who just can't imagine a world in which rock music doesn't exist, and it would boggle them to realize that seventy-five, a hundred years ago, it didn't.
We may not read books in a hundred years. Perhaps there will be no paper forms, they will be released solely as audio books, the new juggernaught of publishing. Perhaps as television shows, of a sort (which will be less and less needing a television). Perhaps oral storytelling?
I don't know. I'm not mentally equipped to figure it out. There are bigger and better brains than me, and I bet they don't know either.
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I like the idea of verbal storytelling, which is probably why I like podcasts and audiobooks so much. I loved sitting around the campfire as a cub scout, listening to the leader telling spooky stories before we all crawled into our sleeping bags, then laid there wide awake, freaking out at every sound coming from the woods.
Exactly - nothing got my imagination going more than sitting around the campfire while Dad told us some long, involved story - then we'd all climb into the tent and I my little pea brain would have a field day !
Good times.
Good times.
Good times.
Good times.
Around the campfire, it's fun to tell or read stories that you wouldn't normally experience around a campfire. Instead of your typical "THe man with the CLAW who KILLED the BOYFRIEND while the GIRL was in the CAR!!!" story that makes everyone jumpy, read a Charles Dickens chapter. Read the poem "The Ning Nang Nong"
Read a Stephen King short story.
Campfire, or just outside sitting in a circle, mostly in the dark, with a flashlight perhaps? It's fascinating.
I like writing, but if the world went smash and I had to make my way as a verbal storyteller, as a new world bard (what a fun idea) then I wouldn't mind it. My knee-jerk reaction is that I would, but the longer I think about it, the less it bothers me.
It's not like stories would cease to exist, like fiction would vanish. Even as the population of the world ekes out a living, struggles with survival, there would be stories. Stories are interesting in that they're both a luxury item of a well-off society...and also one of the most fundamental elements of human survival. Whether you have poetry slams, or paintings on a cavern wall, stories are vital.
Read a Stephen King short story.
Campfire, or just outside sitting in a circle, mostly in the dark, with a flashlight perhaps? It's fascinating.
I like writing, but if the world went smash and I had to make my way as a verbal storyteller, as a new world bard (what a fun idea) then I wouldn't mind it. My knee-jerk reaction is that I would, but the longer I think about it, the less it bothers me.
It's not like stories would cease to exist, like fiction would vanish. Even as the population of the world ekes out a living, struggles with survival, there would be stories. Stories are interesting in that they're both a luxury item of a well-off society...and also one of the most fundamental elements of human survival. Whether you have poetry slams, or paintings on a cavern wall, stories are vital.
I find it depressingly easy to envision a Boy Scout Jamboree, with everyone around the campfire, PMing each other & playing multiuser games.
Well, I sincerely doubt they're telling stories.
It makes one want to start drinking heavily.
*grumble*
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