Comments on: My fantasy

By: The Mad Dreamer

The Mad Dreamer — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 05:44:25 +0000

I know I’m late to the party, but when I was a little boy this was also my princess fantasy.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:31:24 +0000

Wow, I don’t want to claim to be the only person on the planet–or maybe even the only person on this blog–to predict the Facebook IPO implosion, but I will say this as the slide continues through a third trading day: I’m glad I kept well over a third of my endowment on an index of leading U.S. steelmakers! I think I may order a few quire of paper stationery and a self-filling fountain pen!

By: Jakebnto

Jakebnto — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:18:06 +0000

Truffula, no matter how much book shelf you have, the number of books will expand to occupy the available space. It’s like a rule or something.

Speaking from experience.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Mon, 14 May 2012 23:22:42 +0000

Nothing may last “forever” in the geological sense, but I’d bet that some of Hammurabi’s kindergarten scrawls will still be scratched legibly and proverbially “in stone” half a million years after the Facebook IPO unravels in chaos later this week. I my not be there to collect or pay off, but…

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:13:17 +0000

I’m in favor of books pretty much all the way. Sitting in an armchair with a Kindle just wouldn’t be appealing, even if I had such a thing. Besides I like paper, and it takes longer before it makes your eyes hurt. Oh, and it won’t quit working since there aren’t any batteries to die on you. Maybe if they made an e-book reader that was more like an actual book…

@Historiann To be fair, floppies have proven to be quite resilient, with people doing retro computing stuff being able to recover things off of old 5 1/4″ discs that are 15-20+ years old. That and I’m pretty sure they were still making 3.5″ ones probably 5 or 6 years ago. I think I’d trust the floppies more than the flash disk to some extent. I’m pretty sure that the magnetic information will still be there if if I drop it in a pool.

Nothing lasts for ever, so what’s important is a relatively long life, preferably long enough that any information we want to keep can be transferred to a new medium.

Maybe if we used inorganic ink of some kind?

By: Ugsome

Ugsome — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:44:06 +0000

Oh, so that explains my parents’ marriage.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:39:50 +0000

No information technology has proved itelf as long-lasting as books. That could change–but we’ll see. How many of you saved information back in the day to 5-1/2″ or 3-1/2″ floppy discs? Is there any guarantee that today’s flash drives will be accessible 5 or 10 or 20 years from now? Microfilm was supposed to be the wave of the future 60 years ago, putting photographs of newspapers and books on film that was supposedly impervious to decay, but that’s proved not to be the case. This is why I’m skeptical of any attempts to replace codex technology, or claims that some new technology will surpass codex.

As vulnerable to fire and flood as they can be, the original copies of said books and newspapers remain readable and accessible, if they still exist.

By: Feminist Avatar

Feminist Avatar — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:26:30 +0000

I prefer microfilm in certain contexts. Well, in the specific context of research, where I much prefer to read microfilmed newspapers, where I can print off the desired page and take it home, rather than sit for hours with the original codex trying to type or write it out, whilst having to do the constant sit and stand and sit and stand dance to be able to read the small print at the different heights on a broadside paper (that you are not allowed to fold). Currently, I still prefer microfilm to digitised papers as the OCR is not good enough to do a reliable search on the 18th and 19thCs, and they are sooooo slooow to load that you could have *read* 2 pages in the time it takes to open one. Plus I think seeing articles in context gives you a better sense of the history of the period.

Perhaps the ideal would be to own the originals in codex but they’d also have to magical and able to survive without proper humidity controls, dusting, and be able to resist the various coffee, wine and food spills that my other books are required to resist.

By: Miranda

Miranda — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:35:40 +0000

We (husband and I) have thought of that. All of our kindle books backed up on our computer.

But nobody’s forcing anyone to buy a Kindle. It’s just that if someone breaks their Kindle, their books aren’t lost.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 13 May 2012 19:01:27 +0000

Miranda: how long do you think Amazon will find it in their interests to store your library on the cloud? What happens when something bigger and stronger takes over Amazon, or it goes out of business or bankrupt?

I’m happy not to rely on the good graces (and good fortunes) of a corporation to access my library.