Last Sunday, at a conference in Venice, there was a discussion about the transient nature of digital media. The Egyptian stele, the clay tablet, papyrus, parchment, and of course the printed book have all been media for information. The last of these, the book, has managed to survive well for five hundred years, though only when made with rag paper. From the mid-nineteenth century there was a move toward wood pulp paper, which seems to have a maximum life of seventy years—try handling newspapers or books produced shortly after World War II and you’ll discover how many of them disintegrate as soon as you turn the page. For some time, therefore, conferences and researchers have been looking for ways to save the books that cram our libraries. One of the most popular ways, though it’s almost impossible for every book in existence, is to scan and transfer each page onto electronic media.
But this raises another problem. Every medium used for transferring and conserving information, whether the film reel, the disk, or the USB memory stick we use with our computers, is less durable than the book. We know about some of these: the old audiocassette tapes would unravel after a while and we’d try rewinding them, often unsuccessfully, by sticking a pencil in the hole; videocassettes easily lost their color and definition, and soon got damaged if they were wound back and forth. We had long enough to find out how well a vinyl record would fare before it became scratched, though we didn’t have time to find out how long a CD would last. Having been welcomed as an invention that would replace the book, the CD disappeared as soon as the same content became available more cheaply online. We don’t know how long a film will last on DVD; we know only that it sometimes starts skipping when we use it too many times. Likewise, we didn’t have enough time to discover how long floppy disks would last: before we could find out, they were replaced by rigid diskettes, and then by rewritable disks, and then by USB memory sticks. The disappearance of these media has led to the disappearance of the computers that can read them. I don’t suppose anyone has a computer at home with a slot for a floppy disk, and unless all files on the previous support have been transferred to the later support, and this every two or three years, presumably forever, then the information is irretrievably lost, unless we keep a dozen or so computers in the attic, one for each obsolete file-storage method.
This means that all mechanical, electrical, and electronic media have either been shown to deteriorate rapidly, or we don’t know and will probably never know how long they would have lasted.
Finally, it only requires a power surge, lightning, or some other trivial incident to demagnetize a memory card. During a fairly prolonged blackout I would be prevented from using any electronic memory. Though I have all of Don Quixote in my electronic memory, I would not be able to read it by candlelight, in a hammock, on a boat, in the bath, or on a swing, whereas I can read a book in the most adverse conditions. If I drop my computer or e-book from the fifth floor, I would certainly lose everything, but if I drop a book, at worst it would fall apart.
Modern media seem to be aimed more at the broadcasting of information than its conservation. Yet the book was a prime instrument not just for broadcasting information—think of the role played by the printed Bible in the Protestant Reformation—but also for conserving it. It’s just possible that in a few centuries’ time, once all electronic media have become demagnetized, a fine incunabulum will be the only way of finding out about the past. And the modern books that survive will be those that are printed on the best quality acid-free paper.
I’m no traditionalist. On a 250-gigabyte portable hard disk I’ve recorded the greatest masterpieces of world literature and the history of philosophy; there it’s much easier and quicker to find a quote from Dante or the Summa Theologiae than to go to a top shelf and take down a heavy volume. But I’m happy those books are still there on my shelves, useful backups for the time when electronic instruments eventually pack up.
2009