| Spare
a moment to commiserate with the historians and biographers
of the future. The communications revolution has provided
many of us with incredible access to all sorts of information
and exchange, and opened up undreamt of possibilities.
But in the process, it has reduced our need for - and
therefore use of - paper, or any other physical form
of aid to memory. And by doing this, it has destroyed
for the future what used to be considered the essential
sources of knowledge about what will become the past.
Consider, after all, what it means
to talk of recorded history. It was recorded because
there were forms (usually paper forms) in which the
individual and collective thoughts, discussion, decisions,
exchanges, agreements, disputes, accounts and other
activities of societies were recorded and therefore
available for dissection and interpretation. The preservation
of these memorabilia is what has enabled us to know
what little we do know about the past.
It is true that there are now other forms of preserving
the past – audio and video recordings which can be archived
more effectively and in a more space saving way than
the stacks of books, files and manuscripts which clog
up libraries. It could even be argued that these provide
more accurate and evocative accounts of past events
than could the written representations of individuals.
But memory is inherently selective and subjective –
that is surely part of its attraction. Social memories
are rarely based on objectivity, and are much more influenced
by experience and are filtered through contemporary
decisions about what is important. Most historians would
be the first to admit that a major source of joy in
their craft results from wading through this complexity,
remarking upon differences in perceptions of the same
event, and sifting out through this, their own assessment.
Much of this joy – or even information about differences,
or all the subtle details which inhabit the footnotes
to amuse discerning readers – would be lost to the historians
of the future. And there are other non-trivial effects.
Increasingly, communication through email is not just
reducing the incidence of letter writing, but is also
rendering most of us incapable of indulging in it.
The email interaction is transient by intent and design,
it supports a lack of attention to details of syntax
and spelling, and certainly does not reward stylistic
invention or sophistication in the use of language.
Also, because it appears to be so prosaic and so businesslike,
it does not encourage either profound reflection or
indulging in what may seem to be unnecessary detail.
But think of all the fascinating biographies that were
possible only because of the letters to, by and about
the subject, that could be accessed by the biographer.
How many of us would like to be remembered by our emails?
There is another loss of the information age, delectably
documented by Michael Bywater in his magnificent book
''Lost worlds: What have we lost and where did it go?''
(Granta Books, London, 2004) The book is a hilarious
yet profound compendium of societal losses, one of which
he classifies as the loss of texture. This deserves
an extended quotation (from pages 235-236.)
''Consider the pre-computer desk: a litter of papers,
large and small, handwritten, printed and typed, coarse
and fine; letters in varying hands, envelopes of various
sizes bearing stamps from al over the world. Here are
books, annotated and bookmarked; here is a typewriter
with its ribbon and its heavy steel frame. Here are
photographs and drawings, coins and banknotes, documents
bearing seals and counter-signatures, pristine originals
and faded carbon copies, correction fluid marking the
palimpsest of human error, dog-ears distinguishing what
has been well-thumbed from what has been largely ignored…
Now consider today’s equivalent. All is stored on the
network and accessed via mouse-clicks on a clean glowing
screen. Everything is the same: an image seen through
glass. We touch nothing, mark nothing, smell nothing.
In the new world, of I.T., it is not just the desktop
that is a metaphor: everything is a metaphor, where
nothing yellows with age and everything is clean and
new. We are become creatures of sight alone, our whole
attention focussed on a hundred and fifty square inches
of expensive glass.
We have lost something in the process. Not just texture.
Something more. The computer makes everything retrievable,
but it doesn’t retrieve everything. Only the surface.
Scratch that surface and – look! – more surface. The
rest is lost.'' |
