Stone Age And Rocket Age Records—Lost in Time (or 1s & 0s)
I saw a cartoon on a friends Facebook page, by Wiley, of Wiley Ink dot net. It depicted a Paleolithic cave-dweller beginning an inscription on a wall. By the likes of the image, he is using a primitive means of inscription (Duh!) —probably the ash of a spent fire-stoking branch. The caveman had only succeeded in creating one line, whereupon another stone-age dweller—his wife?—hands on her animal-skinned hips at the mouth of the cave exclaiming – “Woah, woah, woah! Stop right there, before you get any more offensive!“ Amused by the apparent over-sensitivity implied in this cartoon—obviously about our social media age and its regression into puritanically controlling speech-limitations, I had a “Eureka!” moment.
‘This is brilliant’, I thought—but for an interpretation my cortex likely read into the work—which maybe the cartoonist didn’t intend (or maybe he did):
Hardly anyone ever stops to think that the Internet is something that is not even seen in the real world (can you hear Lawrence Fishburn’s ominous and sarcastic voice from The Matrix?), thus the setting in the cartoon--a cave.
One needs an electronic device to see anything that’s written on the internet—drawn, created or stored there; I’ve thought about this many times:
All of the writing and digital artwork I have created on the internet is electronically generated and must be seen via a machine. If I don’t print my photos, drawings, photography and essays—my comments, maxims, petitions and books in progress!—print them out and store them somewhere–they could be—and likely will be—lost—were some disaster to befall our civilization (in which case, depending in the severity of the disaster (aren’t all disasters severe?)—it might not matter. Well—what about a partial disaster—say, with ISIS, the Taliban or Russia destroying the Internet?
In a thousand years, if our electrical systems and mainframes have not been destroyed—or even if they haven’t been—virtually no one (if we are still here) will know about the volumes of things that have been created and kept there—unless (and even then) their creators are famous—if they are not stored on memory devices compatible in some future world of tech—gone, forgotten… as good as never made—for that matter, unless they are so prophetic, ground-breaking or helpful that they wind up in museums or nuclear-war- and killer-asteroid- proof time capsules. Kids today don’t know how to “turn on a cassette tape”. Remember Zip drives? Floppy disks? ‘Neither do I.’
It’s almost like we’re tracing out invisible finger sketches—of math problems—in our pockets—lasting long enough to draw a sum.
Offended
And for people to get upset about what other people say in this near invisible medium—is likely something our descendants will laugh at—if they even know about it.
Moreover–even if I and all creators on the Internet were to print out everything they did on paper, bind them in books, magazines or manuscripts and save them, think about this: People read very few books, magazines, journals, periodicals or even letters any more—how many in their lives—in their lives? And most people read digital media. And many are out of fashion in a decade–forgotten. Have you ever been to a used book store? Oh yeah?—how long ago? It’s a grave yard one has trouble finding classics in—and I don’t mean the classics;I mean last year’s best sellers.
Imagine people seeking out the digital media of forgotten people and times, even thirty years ago!
Who is going to remember what Elon Musk or Donald Trump said, other than historians?—or a rapper who thinks he is good at design and philosophy. People argue over what Neil Armstrong said—even though people skilled in dialects and those who knew him know what he said—and he’s as famous as Jesus Christ—and Caesar! And he really did fly–a lot faster than the wind and better than most pilots. really did walk on the moon, which some people will die on a hill over–to say he didn’t.
‘What’s a pilot?…’—people will say in a hundred years, ‘one of those people who used to drive planes?’ So maybe we should lighten up about what is said by a famous so-and-so on social media–or a not-so-famous so-and-so. And definitely stop causing professors and comedians to lose their jobs over a joke no one will remember–especially because, we won’t find in 10 years—or know what it means in 30.
Read a book—and write a real one.
This can also be found on my website at My Site
Thank you for reading.
Carl Atteniese,
Tokyo
