Until revision control becomes embedded in normal usage - Word has it
but you have to switch it on - certainly a large number of iterations
wil be lost. Revision controls means you can revert back to the last
time you changed a document. In gaming this is called "check-pointing
the state", although there are more sophisticated variants of this. I
can bore you to tears on this topic as my job is taken up with
revision control, ensuring that the texts of the company are kept safe
and the revisions maintained. I look forward to the day when revison
control gets embedded in the operating system.
The hard drive rarely loses it's data. It's quite difficult to lose
your data completely even though you delete a file. To completely
erase data requires an effort not many people outside corporations and
govts are willing to expend. Ditto for trying to retreive data which
has been "deleted".
What they don't mention is encryption, which will become popular I
think. So you find the data but you can't understand it as the keys
have been lost. Or the other reason why companies delete emails: the
threat of being sued or any legal proceedings being disrupted if your
emails escape into the wild. Sometimes, you don't want that intimate
conversation to be recorded.
I think that the pursuit of an author will shift to archaeology. I
predict that buying (or stealing) the PC(s) or hard-drives that have
been used by the "rich and famous", or even moderately established,
will become popular.
Don't forget the web browsing history as well. That's always
somewhere, and will also "reveal" something about the author and their
work. Under current legislation, the ISP will carry logs, probably
forever, but do you think the archaeologists of the future will be
able to retrieve these logs? Maybe, maybe not. IRC, AIM, ICQ, Skipe,
Voice over IP: all these are potential sources of data. So much
information and so little time to gather it.
But as Jonson discovered, finding out what an author does with his or
hers orange peel is actually quite difficult, and the hunt maybe not
that rewarding. Or I could invoke a form of Heisenberg's law by saying
that the more information that you have about an author, the less you
know him or her.
Roger
On 9/4/05, Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Anyone here save their emails for those future eager biographers? Not sure
> that I'd like anyone looking at mine -
>
> Best
>
> A
>
> Literary Letters, Lost in Cyberspace
> E-Mail This
> Printer-Friendly
> By RACHEL DONADIO
> Published: September 4, 2005
>
> Back in the 20th century, when publishers had three-martini lunches and
> young women fresh out of Bryn Mawr became secretaries, not editors, it was
> often lamented that the telephone might put an end to literary biography. In
> lieu of letters, writers could just as easily gab on the phone, leaving no
> trace.
>
> Today, a new challenge awaits literary biographers and cultural historians:
> e-mail. The problem isn't that writers and their editors are corresponding
> less, it's that they're corresponding infinitely more -- but not always
> saving their e-mail messages.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/books/review/04DONADIO.html?pagewanted=all
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
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