paper
old visions I think upon
of times past
great fires roar
paper burns
knowledge burns
words burn
thought burns
all is lost.
in 1728 a collector of old norse eddas and papers who had hoarded them without duplication, thousands of pages, found their library caught fire, what was lost, what is gone forever, paper burns, if there is only one copy or if all copies are in the same place, then all is lost, back in the cold war, when nuclear fie in the hearts of cities was a concern, multiple copies of documents were distributed, hard copies, vaults were built to house them, on different continents and different countries, yet still it is only a very small amount that is distributed this way, today people think the world will go on unchanged, stable, at peace, no burning cities, no lost libraries, but if history teaches one thing it is that nothing lasts, a hundred year peace can be broken as easily as a 100 day peace, cities can disappear, nations can disappear, fires can burn away all that has gone before.
the great documents of Timbuktu, thousands of ancient and uncopied irreplaceable ones, burnt, their knowledge and words lost forever, years had been spent convincing the locals that it was safe to unearth their hoarded documents, that they were safe, only to see them lost.
naivity of westerners, the world is a peacefull place, bad things don't happen, this is an illusion.
even in peace libraries burn, Glasgow uni library, fairly modern, with smoke detoectors flame proofing etc, but still it burnt.
Europe a short time ago, Nazi hoards burning ancient books and anything that didn't fit their ideology, all gone.
words burn, knowledge burns, experience burns, memory burns and it is gone.
beware the false security of the modern world, for it can fall far easier than the worlds of yesterday, gone before it is realised, then the world of paper now forlorn and neglected may be important again, but who needs hard copies? why bother with redundancy and multiple copies? the world will always go on being peacefull, the worst will never happen, nothing will be lost.
where is stored knowledge experience memory thought and the meaning of much that has gone before, in the writing of books, a world which doesn't value paper is one that dosnt keep track of the world, which looses the past, which doesn't realise time is deep, that time is long, that today will pass in the blink of an eye and be gone, that what is well stored today on computers will be unreadable in a few short decades, if not destroyed by war or fire, then destroyed by the flow of time, the erasure of magnetics, the movement of electrons on storage discs, the changing languages of computers.
few now can work magnetic tape, how long has it been twenty years? but today is always different, things wont happen, there will be no bad things happening, if history teaches one thing, it is that nothing lasts, that people war, that fires rage, that time passes, that things are lost.
anyways, value paper, look after it, copy it, keep it safe, it carries more than many realise, it carries the world.
of times past
great fires roar
paper burns
knowledge burns
words burn
thought burns
all is lost.
in 1728 a collector of old norse eddas and papers who had hoarded them without duplication, thousands of pages, found their library caught fire, what was lost, what is gone forever, paper burns, if there is only one copy or if all copies are in the same place, then all is lost, back in the cold war, when nuclear fie in the hearts of cities was a concern, multiple copies of documents were distributed, hard copies, vaults were built to house them, on different continents and different countries, yet still it is only a very small amount that is distributed this way, today people think the world will go on unchanged, stable, at peace, no burning cities, no lost libraries, but if history teaches one thing it is that nothing lasts, a hundred year peace can be broken as easily as a 100 day peace, cities can disappear, nations can disappear, fires can burn away all that has gone before.
the great documents of Timbuktu, thousands of ancient and uncopied irreplaceable ones, burnt, their knowledge and words lost forever, years had been spent convincing the locals that it was safe to unearth their hoarded documents, that they were safe, only to see them lost.
naivity of westerners, the world is a peacefull place, bad things don't happen, this is an illusion.
even in peace libraries burn, Glasgow uni library, fairly modern, with smoke detoectors flame proofing etc, but still it burnt.
Europe a short time ago, Nazi hoards burning ancient books and anything that didn't fit their ideology, all gone.
words burn, knowledge burns, experience burns, memory burns and it is gone.
beware the false security of the modern world, for it can fall far easier than the worlds of yesterday, gone before it is realised, then the world of paper now forlorn and neglected may be important again, but who needs hard copies? why bother with redundancy and multiple copies? the world will always go on being peacefull, the worst will never happen, nothing will be lost.
where is stored knowledge experience memory thought and the meaning of much that has gone before, in the writing of books, a world which doesn't value paper is one that dosnt keep track of the world, which looses the past, which doesn't realise time is deep, that time is long, that today will pass in the blink of an eye and be gone, that what is well stored today on computers will be unreadable in a few short decades, if not destroyed by war or fire, then destroyed by the flow of time, the erasure of magnetics, the movement of electrons on storage discs, the changing languages of computers.
few now can work magnetic tape, how long has it been twenty years? but today is always different, things wont happen, there will be no bad things happening, if history teaches one thing, it is that nothing lasts, that people war, that fires rage, that time passes, that things are lost.
anyways, value paper, look after it, copy it, keep it safe, it carries more than many realise, it carries the world.