[Air-l] Why Am I Only Communicating with Text?

Alex Randall Alex at islands.vi
Fri May 25 17:55:53 PDT 2007


Three key concepts in this thread are these:



Media is the fourth R for arts.  Text may remain
important much as did Latin for higher education.



You and I and all of us on this list are using "printed words," and only
printed words, to do our communicating.



Does that not mean that electronic paper will eventually change everything?
Nope. But as Steve has already pointed out, that's still going to use
typographic characters to facilitate communication.





My comment:

My students all text on their cell phones; they share music on their 
computers and iPods, they Facebook and instant message and YouTube .



None of these media have any long term storage.

This era will have no history.

100 years from now there will be nothing to examine, no trace of what the 
content was.



In a bureau drawer, I have the love letters my mother sent to my father in 
the 1930's - paper, envelopes, stamps. These are records.  They are the raw 
material of history. They endure until someone burns them or tosses them on 
a landfill.



In 2000, a local government building asked for contents to put in a  time 
capsule.

I recorded an hour of my radio show and put it on a CD and sent it over 
(along with a disk full of other stuff off my HD - novels, pictures, 
resumes.. )

The day it was sealed, there was a news item from Colorado where a time 
capsule was OPENED had been sealed in 1900.

Among the junk in the capsule was a gold foil cylinder recording

How do you play a gold foil cylinder??

They called the Smithsonian and eventually got Edison's original cylinder 
recorder so they could play the thing.

Makes me wonder in 2100 if anyone will be able to play my CD in my local 
time capsule.

Makes me wonder if anyone will be able to read my kids Instant messages - 
next week, next month.

They evaporate.



When the first word processors appeared in the 1970's I said "This will 
raise the stakes on excellence, cause anyone can take stupid ideas and make 
them look good, so looking good will not be enough to identify good 
writing."



I submit the printed word will always be with us, but you are correct that 
the premium on caliber is rising.

Xlibris and Print on demand publishing means that ANYTHING can get into 
abound volume.

The worth of excellent material rises when there are tons of junk in print.








Alex Randall
Professor of Communication
Univ of the Virgin Islands
Alex at islands.vi
www.water-island.com 




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