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See now, this is what bugs me about new technology... people run around
hailing each new technology as the be all and end all... and we're all
forced to jump on the bandwagon... and then it turns out the new way has all
sorts of limitations that make it a pain in the rear.
In the article i read on CD degradation, a music archivist pointed out that,
while their older CDs were already damaged to the point where parts of the
data had been lost forever, you can take any wax or vinyl record and play it
by spinning it around a pencil, with a pin attached to a paper cone (for
amplification)... and there you have the music, in pretty much its original
form. Simple, pure, and beautiful.
When asked what the most endurable method of saving music was, his response
was to keep the score on paper, because properly preserved, it can last for
hundreds of years. Simple, pure, and beautiful.
It used to be that you could take photos, make prints, and a hundred years
later, your ancestors could sit down with a photo album and flip through a
family history. Very simple and user-friendly.
Now we're all so busy running around trying to document each minutae of our
lives in digital formats and storing it all on discs, but where's the
advantage of all these fancy technologies, really, if 1) People are so busy
documenting experiences that they aren't really experiencing them... ie.
people who see most of the Grand Canyon through a viewfinder; and 2) People
are going to have to reproduce their personal archives every few years for
safety, as well as any time the technology changes AGAIN... and then you
need a special and probably unportable device to view it all anyway.... you
can't just sit down in the garden with grandma and flip through pictures.
My point being: sometimes, in the long run, new isn't always better, so its
wise to be leery about buying the hype.
Lynne Wright
Technical Communications
Positron Inc.
5101 Buchan St. H4P 2R9
(514) 345-2200
fax: 345-2272
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