Written Communication - Part II

Previously, I wrote about the importance of writing because, among other things, it allows us to learn from the past.  The great thing about learning from the past is that it allows you to escape from having to learn everything by experience (i.e. the hard way).  I’ve decided that, at least in my life, I prefer to maximize the number of things I learn the easy way (by listening to or reading about others)!

My thought for today is about the somewhat precarious nature of our written record in the 21^st century and beyond.  I might be off-base, but here it goes.  I wonder if our written record might get lost over time.  Specifically, I am talking about the written record of the world that increasingly exists only in an electronic form.  We are encouraged to go paperless in many things, which is great for trees, but maybe not for posterity.  I am one of the last people to adopt new technologies or new ways of doing things, but even in my own life I find that much of what I do and write only exists in an electronic form.  For example, the text in this blog only exists electronically.  Ideas encoded in electrons are hardly the most enduring method of recording history.

Let me give you an example from my own life.  When I wrote my dissertation back in 1991, I wrote it on a “word processor” – I think it was on a DEC Rainbow computer.  It was one of the first things I wrote that was not written entirely on paper and then typed up at the end.  The file for that document was stored on the hard drive of that computer and backed up on a 3.5” floppy disk.  That hard drive is loooong gone, and if I still have the floppy disk (which I doubt), I’d have a hard time finding an old floppy drive that still works so that I could read it.  But, that doesn’t really matter that much, because there are printed hardcopies that still exist of my dissertation – for example there is a copy in the basement of the Kelvin Smith library at CWRU (unless someone checked it out!).  Also, I have a printed copy as well.  But what I find happening more and more is that, even with a student’s dissertation, I am sent an electronic copy after their defense, and not a hardcopy.  I don’t know if a hardcopy exists in the library anymore of the more recent dissertations.  Certainly, it is not unreasonable to think that at some point in the future, people will never print out a copy of their dissertation – it will only exist in electronic versions.  So, I just wonder – how enduring is that?  If I don’t take the time to copy all of my past work onto my next computer and save it to the latest media, eventually it will all probably be lost.  If I store it on the internet, then who knows where it is or how durable that record is.  If Google disappears tomorrow – something I have no control over – then I’m pretty sure all the content of this blog disappears with it.  That’s probably not a great loss!  The point is not about my meaningless drivel – the point is about important documents related to knowledge and history.  For example, is it reasonable to think that there might come a time where scientific journals are never actually published in any physical form, but only published electronically?  I think that time has come already for some journals.  If the journal’s servers and backups go down, what is left of that record?

It’s probably all fine until there is some much larger disaster.  What if someone develops the equivalent of an atomic bomb, but is directed towards electronic storage and communication?  That’s surely a “humane” way to destroy a whole country.  The point is, if all of our electronic information was suddenly wiped out and permanently unavailable to us, what history would we have left?  It seems to me that the loss of knowledge could be much bigger than what was lost by the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.  The complete loss of the electronic record is probably not a huge loss right now, in 2015, but what about 50 or 100 years from now when our reliance on electronic storage must surely be complete.  Will there even be libraries with hardcopies of books?

So, I will leave you with this thought.  Maybe someday, after the human race has been wiped out, someone will come upon earth and seek to uncover the history of man.  They will find a few bits of well-preserved hieroglyphics carved in stone, some broken bits of pottery with writing inscribed on it, maybe a chance bit of papyrus and some random stacks of old books.  But they will notice that the history of man seems to end around 2000 AD and they might wonder – what ever happened to them all?  They built all sorts of machines and buildings after that time, but they seemed to have stopped recording their own history!!

The "Magic" of Written Communication - Part I

I consider written communication to be the greatest invention in the history of mankind.  The ability to communicate with other human beings in "non real time" is, to me, "magical."  Spoken communication is, of course, critically important for the progress of humanity.  But spoken words, as soon as they are spoken, are immediately gone and all we have left is our recollections of them.  When something is written, you can go back to it again and again and get exactly the same information.  It is as close as we will ever get to time travel:  through writing, I can communicate with people in the future; through writing, I can hear directly from those who lived in the past.  That all seems pretty remarkable.

I've always wanted to write.  I remember trying to write books when I was in third grade.  In high school, I used to sit with my friends and we would compose fictional stories.  The stories were terrible and poorly written, of course, but we had fun.  I think I always had in the back of my mind that I would become a world-famous author.  Hah!  Then I majored in Biomedical Engineering and spent the next 12 years immersed in moving up the ladder of degrees until I finished my PhD.  During those 12 years, I took one - yes one - semester of English (and that was more speech than writing).

But here I am - writing.  One great thing about the internet is that it gives you the opportunity to write things that go out to the world.  Whether anyone reads them...who knows?  But still, it's kind of fun.

For me, writing is the perfect communication platform.  I am not a quick thinker - never have been.  I have a terrible memory.  But when you write, you can take as long as you want thinking through how to phrase your thoughts.  For example, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what word to use to describe writing for the title of this blog entry.  I settled on "magic" even though, as a scientist, I'm not really excited about that word.  I thought about "miracle", but that word has some pretty specific meaning to me and I wanted to reserve it for future blogs.  I thought about "excellence of writing" or "greatness of writing", but those words just seemed lacking in terms of what I wanted to express.  In the end, I felt "magic" was the best word to describe how I felt about writing.

When you write, you also have a chance to research your material, check sources, etc.  As a researcher, I really appreciate that.  I want to write things that are factual, correct, true.  When you're talking and you want to make a point, you may not be totally confident of your sources.  If you have a bad memory like me, you're never even confident if you remembered some of the basic principles correctly.  Since I hate looking stupid, it is often safer to keep my mouth shut!  But writing gives you the chance to run to the reference library (or the internet!) and check everything out first.  I know that isn't always true - Facebook is based on writing and it is full of unchecked foolishness!  

The funny thing is that after all those years in college without a class on writing, my entire career in research is dependent on my ability to write.  If I don't write high-quality manuscripts for scientific publication and if I don't write clear and cohesive grant applications, then my career will end quickly!  It was a painful process to learn to write in a manner that allowed me to be successful (so far)...

I hope you find the things I've written on this page interesting and thought-provoking.  I hope it spurs you to start writing your own blog.  It is the most "magical" form of communication!