Thanks for this. Where is the "revision" control on Word. Or is there really
such??
"Born digital" and staying as such is a recipe for techno amnesia -
particularly with the technology constantly changing - platforms, software -
much of it a cross between a software designer's and hardware engineer's wet
dream combined with corporate profiteers who love obsolescence along with an
insistence that we have to buy the new new soft/hard ware. Much of which
we do not need. (Well, I do like the capacity to combine images, words and
sound - so I am a bit of a hypocrite!)
But, ff you want to leave a trail, archivists tell me, print stuff out on 20
pound acid free paper. That will survive. And students of your work will
have the thrill of touching real material - indeed paper that was touched by
you.
Having worked with the archives of poets (journals, letters, and
manuscripts) I have (not always) found it a real high.
Stephen V
> 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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