Mixed Media Meltdown

I’ve been following a debate which crops up quite frequently in reading circles:  Why can’t I resell my ebook?  Both readers and authors have joined in the discussion threads at these GoodReads SciFi & Fantasy Book Club topics:  e-Book Piracy and   Do you care if you own a work?

One of the best links posted happened to refer to Scalzi’s Whatever blog post a year ago entitled Why in Fact Publishing Will Not Go Away Anytime Soon: A Deeply Slanted Play in Three Acts.  Well worth the time and will definitely have you smiling, if not laughing out loud before you reach the stunning conclusion.

All of this got me thinking about the media used over the centuries to store our content.

Pictograms, Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Pictograms, Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Cuneiform script by an expert scribe, 26th century BC

Cuneiform script by an expert scribe 26th century BC

Papyrus

Papyrus
Printing press from 1811
Printing press from 1811

Edison Home Phonograph, Suitcase-Modell

Edison Home Phonograph, Suitcase-Model

19th century studio camera, with bellows for focusing

19th century studio camera, with bellows for focusing
"Super 8" 8 mm films
"Super 8" 8 mm films
A typical LP, showing its center label
A typical LP, showing its center label
Philips Cassetten-Recorder EL 3302 (1968)
Philips Cassetten-Recorder EL 3302 (1968)
Size comparison between a Betamax cassette (top) and a VHS cassette (bottom).
Beta v. VHS
Floppy Drives
Floppy Drives
The readable surface of a Compact Disc includes a spiral track wound tightly enough to cause light to diffract into a full visible spectrum
Readable surface of a Compact Disc
Six hard disk drives with cases opened showing platters and heads; 8, 5.25, 3.5, 2.5, 1.8 and 1 inch disk diameters are represented.
Six hard disk drives with cases opened showing platters and heads; 8, 5.25, 3.5, 2.5, 1.8 and 1 inch disk diameters are represented.
Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing

Out of all of the media types (and obviously many that I’ve left out like the ever popular 8-track tape), which ones can you read without the benefit of proprietary equipment or electricity?

Imagine yourself a visitor to Earth in the far future, to an Earth either abandoned (because we migrated to other planets or galaxies by discovering FTL) or lifeless (because we didn’t see the writing on the wall and continued our parasitic existence to extinction).   What format has the best chance of being understood and surviving to be reviewed?  In our mad dash to digitize everything, for convenience and experience, what do we leave for posterity?

I have boxes of albums from the 70s and 80s in my basement I can no longer listen to because I don’t own a turntable.  I even have a few 8-tracks and Beta tapes holding content hostage.  I have crates of recorded VHS tapes of movies, television shows and family gatherings, which I could possibly view, if my ancient VCR still functions and the magnetic tape hasn’t degraded or been demagnetized.   I have a project back-burnered for the moment to review several thousand slides taken by my father, his brother, his father and my aunt in the hopes of converting them to a digital photograph format.

I fear there will be no Rosetta Stone to help our alien visitors nor a still functioning DVD reader or Internet to Google the translation.  Our binary epitaph of bits and bytes may languish forever locked in silence and darkness while the humble book shines forth as a beacon of historical hope.

Singing, Snowing, Zinging, Knowing

My least favorite forecast includes ‘wintry mix’ concatenated with ‘winter storm warning’ culminating in excruciating commute times.  My vanpool dodged that bullet (barely) on the return trip home last night, for which I am very grateful.  It allowed me to watch and listen to my daughter’s first concert of the year, as a member of the Chamber Choir at the UNT College of Music.   While she is also a member of the Collegium Singers, she enjoys the challenge of increasing her repertoire in those two choirs and in her vocal performance studies individually as well.  Musicology is her primary focus as an undergraduate for the next year or so.   Living eight or ten hours north (by automobile) from her concerts would be torture if it weren’t for the appeasement offered by the College’s live streaming of most of the concerts.

Even though the concert only lasted thirty minutes, Terry and I enjoyed hearing Rachelle’s voice across the aether of cyberspace.

Immediately prior to the concert, while I shook off the last dregs of the work day, Terry tried a new recipe for stuffed tomatoes, which we barely got in the oven before the singing started.  Twenty minutes later we sampled his latest savory culinary comeuppance.  Delicious!

We opened the front door to near white out conditions.  We couldn’t see across our court to the houses on the opposite side.  Thick snow blanketed the steps and driveway, even though just ninety minutes prior there had been less than a half inch of icy, slushy, sleety mess.  We promptly closed the door and return to our regularly scheduled DVR programming.

Snow Accumulation in just 90 minutes Thursday evening
Snow Accumulation in just 90 minutes Thursday evening

Due to some systems maintenance performed overnight, I overslept by thirty minutes, awaking at 5:30 a.m.  Barely stopping to slap on some socks, I jammed on my boots, grabbed my coat and gloves and opened the garage door to an even thicker blanket of snow.  And while it looked fluffy and airy, it proved to be heavy and wet.  I began to doubt my ability to shovel just half the driveway to the street in the thirty minutes before I needed to dress for work.  My white knight came to my rescue and helped vanquish the snow dragon.   He even volunteered to do the steps while I finished my morning ablutions.

Terry drove me the two miles north to the Hallmark plant in Leavenworth so I could catch my ride to work.  As we were passing by the IHOP in Lansing, I commented that we should have had breakfast when I was awake between two and four o’clock earlier this morning.  Being such a considerate husband, he drove in a circle around the van chanting ‘na na’ at me because he planned to stop at said restaurant for breakfast on the return trip home.  True to his taunting, we saw him parked front and center at the IHOP as we headed south on K-7/US-73 (aka as Main Street in Lansing).

Our commute to Kansas City’s Midtown and Plaza regions remained uneventful, if a bit slow.  We observed several cars languishing in the medians and ditches, but we deigned to join them.  And for once, I made it to work when some of my team members decided to turn around a go home due to the icy road conditions in their part of the metro area.

Finally, and in closing, in perusing the blogs I follow as part of my morning tea sipping ritual, Modesitt posted a rebuttal to his previous blog (from earlier this week).  The earlier post, entitled ‘The Problem of Truth/Proof” generated several comments (a couple of which were mine), which then spurred Mr. Modesitt’s posting this morning, entitled “True” Knowledge is Not an Enemy of Faith.  I will monitor this blog throughout the day to follow the next wave of comments, but will probably refrain from commenting myself.

May you all have a restful and peaceful weekend!