Printed Books Will Reach Future Generations, Internet Files Won’t

Even before printed books started showing up about 600 years ago, hand-scribed tomes in monasteries ensured that the fall of the Roman Empire would not be so dark after all.  Knowledge would reach later people.

     The same lesson shouldn’t be lost on writers today who spend most of their time with software and the Internet.  Printed books will reach future generations, but Internet files won’t.  Websites will disappear without a trace once the last hosting bill isn’t paid.  No relative will comb through your personal
hard drive after you’re gone to save any thoughts and feelings. Nothing will survive.

     Letters and diaries and other scribblings only have a chance to reach the future if they are bound into a book.  Medieval monasteries tended to toss them onto a disordered pile in a remote storage room, where they would remain lost and unknown, sometimes for centuries.

    The same happens today.   Books might end up in garage sale and attic boxes or book-sale fundraisers, but at least they haven’t been summarily deleted with a keystroke, forever.  This is not to say that some websites won’t hang on for a few years, but the time will soon come.

      The same is true of political writing.  We still can find copies of magazines for World War II Germans and Japanese, for example, which might shed light on contemporary motivations before the victors falsify them with historical spin.

     Today’s blogs and websites can be vaporized overnight if a ruling regime wants to.  Freedom of speech now favors well-funded organizations, not the voices of individual citizens or smaller political groups.  Who has the cash or expertise to run their own Web servers?

     Well, cash itself might not be as important as political will and technical expertise.  Used computer servers can be picked up for almost nothing on some online auctions, such as the federal General Services Auction, or GSA, usually in your city or state:  for example a “Computer Server HP DL380G6” (photo) perhaps for $10 or a bit more, even used on Amazon.

     But how many would-be blog and Web publishers are then willing to bone up on the technology:  “AV and Server Rack – includes Server Rack 70 inch height, HP LTO-4-1760 Tape Library; KVM Switch; 3 HP DL380G6 Servers (HD wiped), 2 Sans Drives, 2 HP T3000 UPS. DL380G6 10670960780005,” as described in an older offering.

     Despite having your own server, you’re still on the globally vulnerable Internet.  Better is a cheap, perhaps manual, offline printing press obtained in used condition that will issue a book-like tract that just might force itself into the future like a message in a bottle on the ocean.  Ask any prepper.