Thought Collector: Printing [retyped on March 30, 2015 from a
printout from March 16, 2002 from an email account that no
longer exists that was tied into a device no longer supported!*
If I hadn't printed this out, these would would forever be
gone.* Prophetic words follow! -Ken] Printing is an amazing
thing.* By writing in a format that is captured on paper, there
is a chance to communicate with the future!* Hundreds of years
may pass by, but your little piece of paper may be your ticket
to immortality! Look at Emily Dickenson.* What if all of her
poetry was captured on paper-tape, used back in the 1970s moreso
than magnetic media?* 100 years later, it's unlikely that anyone
would be able to decode it, or would even want to, because it is
encrypted in a sense. Or worse, had her poetry been saved to
diskette, the magnetic media would have deteriorated.* Or in a
sent-email stored on a server somewhere?* What if the holder of
that server goes out of business?* There goes your poetry,
Emily. But no!* She wrote on every piece of paper she could
find - even toilet paper.* Because of this - because her
writings were saved on paper, they were found, and read, and
saved, and cherished.* She died, but became immortal in a very
human fashion. I don't like my work to be lost.* There is
nothing worse than getting everything "just so", and blam,
something happens that destroys or distorts your work.
Certainly, I could learn to take the stance of the Buddhist monk
sand-painting, spending months drawing a picture with colored
sand, only to destroy it when finished.* In a sense, that's what
happens when you write and other people read.* When other people
read what you wrote, your written thoughts are being scattered
to the winds - the thoughts are no longer just yours anymore,
but belong to anyone who reads them. It's a frightening thing
- your baby is out there for the world to take, distort, malign,
or worse: Ignore.* But it's empowering as well - your baby is
out there for the world to cherish, nurture, love, absorb. The
permanence of printing appeals to me the most.* if the batteries
die on my VTech Postbox companion, everything I wrote here is
lost.* If the Yahoo server that I send the e-mail to has a
glitch, it's lost.* Print it out, and technology is less likely
to destroy it.* Sure, there is fire and water - but if you have
fire and water destroying your writings, it's more than likely
that more important things than your writings are at stake!
That's all I have to say for now on on this subject.
