Literary Timecapsule Project

I kinda wonder what the point is...

God, I hate this. Cringe worthy. Yuck. No.

I really don't get the point. I've been trying to think of one and I can't. The people in 2114 are still going to have Margaret Atwood's many many other novels, including, you know, the FIVE nominated for the Booker. I don't see how a "new" one no one's ever read will arouse much more than mild interest at that point. Like if tomorrow we discovered a book by D. H. Lawrence no one had ever seen. We might think, "cool," but how many of us would read it? If Atwood's reputations lasts the modern lit professors might be a bit excited, but could one more work by a very prolific author really add any insights?

I don't know. Atwood is one of my favourite writers and I've read all her novels but I'm just shaking my head at this.

My first question was -- who will be around in 100 years who will know how to make paper/bind books? And will there still be machinery to do it, or will it have to be done by hand?

Also, WTF? Why not use hemp, or some other more sustainable plant to make the paper?

Karen Junker said:

My first question was -- who will be around in 100 years who will know how to make paper/bind books? And will there still be machinery to do it, or will it have to be done by hand?

Also, WTF? Why not use hemp, or some other more sustainable plant to make the paper?

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Regular old wood is just as sustainable, and longer lasting, than almost anything else there is. Hemp? Seriously? Nope, wood is not only better, it is easier, and more sustainable.

I hate this idea for current readers, but it's a wonderful idea for those around when it's opened. What's the point? Seriously?

A new one that no one has ever read is not uncommon, and in creates massive interest.

I would kill to learn that someone found a new story by Mark Twain, or Jack London, or Charles Dickens. And a new play by Shakespeare? Or that they had all written stories and buried them in a time capsule, all due to be opened tomorrow.

I think a time capsule is an even better place for a personal journal of the kind you don't want anyone you know to find and read right after you die. I love teh idea of a journal written with teh knowledge that no one will read it for one hundred years. The freedom to write completely uncensored would be tremendous.

And the same uncensored freedom would likely apply to fiction, as well. No worries about insulting someone, about being sued, about writing without the possibility of hurting anyone you know.

And come on, people. Nothing is as sustainable as wood, and making paper books is a heck of a lot more Eco-friendly than using anything else there is. It isn't paper that's harming our forests. Paper harms nothing. What harms our forests is cutting trees to build parking lots, and it's the silliest thing of all, cutting trees to make room for new crops, such as hemp.

When I think of sustainable, I'm thinking of things like rapid growth and regeneration, as well as increased consumption of carbon dioxide & increased production of oxygen. Or maybe even using recycled materials.

Here's an article about it: http://www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Live-Green/Green-Purchasing/Paper.aspx

Maybe hemp isn't a good plant to make paper from. I don't really know.

Recycled paper

Just to be completely contradictory, I'm gonna say we might not even have paper books 100 years from now. Rather than be printed, the time capsule books will just get released to whatever ereader that's common then.

Oh, actually hemp is a pretty good option: http://www.hemphasis.net/Paper/paper.htm

Why the heck would not we have paper books nor the knowledge to produce them in 100 years?

Today, we have people who know how to (and do) make parchment, leatherbind a book by hand, who practice calligraphy, who practice manuscript illumination, by hand, who learn how to make and write with quills.

We have people keeping up pre-digital printing workshops, working with old fashioned press, with metal types and the like.

We have a whole community of hobbyists who find, restore and use typewriters.

And of course, we have hundred of written sources that document how to do all this in great details.

Seriously. Vintage-inspired and handmade goods are so trendy right now, and I think it's just getting started.

We just have to hope the hobbyists don't get vaporized, or eaten by zombies.

Karen Junker said:

My first question was -- who will be around in 100 years who will know how to make paper/bind books? And will there still be machinery to do it, or will it have to be done by hand?

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They will be installing a printing press as well.

I think this is a fab idea (as James says, for future readers)

I would kill to learn that someone found a new story by Mark Twain, or Jack London, or Charles Dickens. And a new play by Shakespeare? Or that they had all written stories and buried them in a time capsule, all due to be opened tomorrow.

I think a time capsule is an even better place for a personal journal of the kind you don't want anyone you know to find and read right after you die. I love teh idea of a journal written with teh knowledge that no one will read it for one hundred years. The freedom to write completely uncensored would be tremendous.

And the same uncensored freedom would likely apply to fiction, as well. No worries about insulting someone, about being sued, about writing without the possibility of hurting anyone you know.

Click to expand...

Yup, pretty much all of that in fact.

TheNighSwan said:

Why the heck would not we have paper books nor the knowledge to produce them in 100 years?

Today, we have people who know how to (and do) make parchment, leatherbind a book by hand, who practice calligraphy, who practice manuscript illumination, by hand, who learn how to make and write with quills.

We have people keeping up pre-digital printing workshops, working with old fashioned press, with metal types and the like.

We have a whole community of hobbyists who find, restore and use typewriters.

And of course, we have hundred of written sources that document how to do all this in great details.

Click to expand...

Robot apocalypse.

Obviously.

I was just remembering back to 1964 or so when I wanted to macrame' something and the only material I could find with instructions was someone's master's thesis in a library someplace across the whole country. Within 5 years, everyone was doing it.

I've never been a huge fan of art installations, so maybe I'm just biased.

As a reader right now, I say fuck you to future readers. I would much rather read Margaret Atwood's new book during my lifetime. If a book has to resort to this sort of novelty affect to draw interest, then it wasn't much of an interesting book in the first place. Also, with regards to a new story by Mark Twain, the difference here is that would be an unexpected unpublished story by Mark Twain, as opposed to a Margaret Atwood novel they'll all have known was coming. I can't muster up the same excitement for a planned project as I could for a true lost work. No apologies.

This is the part that got me:

She predicted that the readers of 2114 might need "a paleo-anthropologist to translate some of it for them", because "language of course will have changed over those 100 years.

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Really? In a mere 100 years? I seriously doubt that, given the rapid dumbing down of today's society, they'll be so far advanced from today's language that they'll be unable to comprehend it. And should the opposite happen, and an Idiocracy-like future awaits (which I fear is far more likely), the point will be moot anyway.

That's not how language change works anyway.

Even when a language goes through rapid periods of changes, it takes way more than 100 years to make a new language the speakers of which cannot comprehend the old forms of yond.

Unless the languages goes through a radical literary and spelling reform as well, but that's quite a distinct matter —Turks today can't understand the Turkish language from a century ago, but that's because it was written in the Arabic alphabet and loaded with a proportion of Arabic and Persian loan worlds that is quite unlike that of the modern language (but these changes didn't happen naturally, there were active reformists behind them).

TheNighSwan said:

That's not how language change works anyway.

Even when a language goes through rapid periods of changes, it takes way more than 100 years to make a new language the speakers of which cannot comprehend the old forms of yond.

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True, but some individual words can fall out of use in 100 years and become puzzling to most readers. We might charitably suppose that's what Atwood had in mind. Though even if that sort of translation was necessary, a "paleo-anthropologist" would hardly be the person to provide it.

Maybe she was joking, and the reporter didn't catch it?