Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
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Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
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I have been watching a BBC programme on life in the time of the Romans. This week it was about capturing the life of every day people (a tall order). In the one thousand years of Roman civilisation, t
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Forums » Open clinical » General clinical » Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
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Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
posted at 12/9/2012 1:25 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2947
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 29/4/2013 |
I have been watching a BBC programme on life in the time of the Romans. This week it was about capturing the life of every day people (a tall order). In the one thousand years of Roman civilisation, there is only one rocking baby's crib and that was found at Herculaneum with a remains of the baby inside the blacked frame. The inscriptions on tombstones have provided clues about everyday life but as occurs in history, little is left of the average person, doctor, slave etc (doctors are slaves). Which brings me to us. I have several website and when I die I would like to think these could be preserved as a record not just of me and my thoughts but about life in this time. But will these innumerable wesbites, FaceBook, and doc2doc be preserved so that in eg five hundred years time, or a few millenia after Mad Max 2, people could read about us as we like to do about Elizabethan England or Grecian Urns etc. But how little we know even about such famous people as Shakespeare? Was he really Will from Stratford-on-Avon? As fewer and fewer photographs are printed and as more and more stuff ends up in iCloud etc, I wonder if in a few hundred or a thousand years if all our endless chatter will have evaporated into the ether. Sure, the big picture stuff like who was president or queen will always be there but as few of us now keep paper diaries and as software changes so often, I think much will be lost. I can remember six inch floppy disks and my first Mac which was an amazing 512 K and portable to boot if you did not mind lugging a cube the size and weight of a bowling ball in the bus each morning to work. Does the BMJ have any plans for archiving this drivel we write each night while England wakes up and I am ready for bed? What of the future or wll there be none as the warming planet melts or Jesus comes back triumphant preceeded by the probably obese, diabetic horsemen of the Apocalypse? |
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Re: Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
posted at 12/9/2012 2:29 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2035
First: 12/3/2010 Last: 19/5/2013 |
You are so right, Odysseus. I have a drawer of 3 1/2" discs, that are unreadable now, as my PC doesn't have a suitable disc drive for them let alone 5 1/4", or the 8" ones that precedee them. We have boxes of the 3.5s in the loft that hold my son's collection of computer games, whwich may be readable, as he also has left us with this collection of consoles - game machines. Having said that, if you can acheive a physical connection, digital media are almost infinitely translatable and portabale, so piping an archive to a new format takes only time and a little programming. On trivia, I think that it was Twitter that donated recently all its messages for a whole 24 hours to some US Uni museum. I wish anyone who reads them in a weeks time, let alone a hundred years, great joy. But we do know a bit more about the personal lives of the Romans than you might expect, Odysseus, Excavations at Hadrian's Wall in Northern England discovered the Vindolanda Tablets, written in ink on thin wood panels. Some are military reports, but others are highly personal, EG "I have sent you pairs of socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants. Greetings to Elpis, Lucius, Tetricus and all your messmates with whom I pray that you live in the greatest good fortune." "Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present. Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him (?) their greetings. (2nd hand) I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail. (Back, 1st hand) To Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Cerialis, from Severa." |
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Re: Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
posted at 12/9/2012 2:52 PM BST
on bmj.com
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*Moderator*
Posts: 1436
First: 7/4/2011 Last: 17/5/2013 |
Hi Odysseus, John and all I have asked James, our main man in Technology about this and he said we do occasionally download what is posted which is in XML and is stored in files for each day by content type. This is done for archiving purposes, lest the site crashes or we do a redesign. So, yes our discussions are archived within BMJ towers but who knows what the future will look like and whether archaeologists or deep sea divers will uncover BMA House and find the records stored on a rusty server. |
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Re: Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
posted at 12/9/2012 4:28 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 321
First: 12/11/2010 Last: 8/5/2013 |
We are entering the New Dark Ages. In 700 years time archaeologists of the day will curse us for our rapid technological innovation [i.e. greed driven redundancy cycles], which mean that data storage protocols change every few years, and consequently most of this digital age will be lost to decay, while the vellum and acid-free paper of previous millenia will continue to be available (provided the accountants do not decide to digitise and destroy the original to save money). |
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Re: Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
posted at 12/9/2012 5:28 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1280
First: 9/12/2011 Last: 14/5/2013 |
I beg to Differ, For Herein lies logic, As long as Mankind can read Books, Aka- The Printed Text, Words, manuals, Manuscripts, etc, we are still in the game. Alas, many of our Children walk around too many Shopping malls, texting away on the 3G cell phones, oblivious to the subtle elegance of a Greek philosophy book, or one of my college texts on Forensic Science. Man must by necessity return to the slow reading, of books! And tune down the Rhetoric of all this so called progress, Slow is better in education, although I often break that rule by now having near 1000 courses done for the last 18 months, but I do it for fun, I actually enjoy education. DUaneF |
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Re: Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
posted at 12/9/2012 9:39 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 3037
First: 27/3/2012 Last: 18/5/2013 |
I agree with respected Odysseus in that the complete data should be stored securely in an 'archive' format so that we could review it later on at any time. Considering the developed technologies today, it would not be so difficult. |
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Re: Apocalypse Now or Archive us forever?
posted at 12/9/2012 10:04 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2947
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 29/4/2013 |
I received with the daily drivel which gets thrown on our dewy lawn each morn, a big advert on cameras. Why do I need a camera as all my photos are now on my laptop, I never look at them and we no longer have a photo album. Same argument. On the other hand I have some lovely sepia photos of forebears who still look blankly at me each day. |
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