FACT - Freedom Against Censorship Thailand

A little Valentine’s heart
[FACT comments: We missed Valentine's Day (but Happy V.D. anyway!). This article reflects on the real meaning of technology and our future. Will the next generations have  anything we created to remember us by?]

OPEN THOUGHT
Putting pen to paper for posterity’s sake
DON SAMBANDARAKSA
Bangkok Post Database: February 6, 2008

As mankind progresses, technology makes things smaller, more efficient and more ethereal. Tracking the planets as they move through the heavens used to require massive feats of engineering and construction. Stonehenge was what the Druids of England used to look at the stars and many of its stones still remain standing today. Later we had sextants, then books. Today, we have software or even free websites that can track the stars with much more accuracy than what was available 6,500 years ago.

However, the mechanism, a temple of carefully-aligned monoliths and stones, that was used to track the planets 6,500 years ago is a UNESCO world heritage site. The sextants that early mariners used can still be dug up from the sea floor, rusted but intact. In the ’70s and ’80s I remember we had a 100 year ephemeris published by the US Navy. In another 100 years it might just about still be around, if the termites have not had it for dinner first.

But what of software, or worse, web sites? Will they exist next year, let alone in a century’s time?

Of course, using a piece of software is better for the environment than it is to publish a paper book, mill a copper sextant or spend many years quarrying and moving huge monoliths and arranging them, but what are we leaving for the future to learn about us?

The same can be said of television. When radio broadcasts first started, it was said that anyone could hear them in space once the radio waves propagated through the ether at the speed of light. A thousand years from now, science fiction writers wrote, aliens on a planet a thousand light years away would be seeing our television and listening to our radio as we see and hear them today.

However, it seems that the window of opportunity of doing that will be just a hundred years or so.

Today, we use digital broadcasting, complete with compression, encryption and digital rights management. To anyone who does not pay for the key, it is gibberish. A thousand years from now, how will aliens be able to pay for a key from a civilisation long gone? Ten years ago, could we have even envisioned technologies such as WiFi-N that can carry so much data using so little power?

One might argue that the connected world has given rise to huge resources of information such as Wikipedia, but as we recently found out, Wikipedia is the lowest common denominator of information that all can agree on, and as we all know, history is written by the victors. Perhaps when Homer (of Greek mythology, not the one who lives in Springfield) came across the Lotus Eaters, were they truly intoxicated? Would he have come to a different conclusion had he come across an underground train full of people, none talking to each other, all reading and writing text messages or playing games on their mobiles?

This line of thought started when I came across a box of old letters I had received in the mid-’90s. Having a lull over the New Year, I read through them, each handwritten letter bringing back so many memories. It was not just the words, but the way they were written, the choice of paper (aerogramme, normal white paper, or cute paper with teddy bears and flowers) that said a lot about the writer. Then there was the handwriting. Most importantly it was the way a piece of paper was so free form, so malleable compared to the rigid, texts and emails that we have today.

One letter in particular began with a picture of what I can only say was a heart, but the lady who wrote the letter had made a small note to one side that it was a picture of an apple and that I was not to take it the wrong way.

Those letters will probably, barring any fire or termite infestation, be in that box for my children and grandchildren to relive those few years of my life and wonder what on earth I was up to back then. Later, the trail goes cold. Who has emails from 10 years ago? Even if one did keep them, they would be buried in a forest of work, spam and other emails that are not of emotional significance. What of those SMS text messages of sweet nothings once sent? Most likely they will have long since disappeared along with that first phone that was lost, dropped in the bath, or simple stopped working a decade ago.

Druid star-measuring devices last for millennia. Instant messages last for seconds. Is this truly progress?

The other point is that pen and paper are so free form. One can doodle apples and hearts, and put in arrows to short notes explaining these sketches and how to interpret them. While we may live in a world of multimedia and rich media, try sending someone a rich message in Flash or PowerPoint and listen to them complain about the size of the file. When was the last time that happened? I respond best to plain text emails, not even Microsoft Word attachments, as it is much easier to open them and reply using my phone.

The closest thing we have to these whisperings of sweet nothings in the margin would probably be clip art. But clip art is so formal and rigid, so structured and boring. It is a matter of selection rather than creation. Anyone can forward clipart, it is a matter of finding it, or more likely, having it forwarded to you from another first.

Technology, SMS, email, IM and the Internet may have made communications more efficient and more effective from a business point of view, but what has it done to enrich life? Perhaps it’s because letters take days to arrive that we put more effort into writing them. An email is usually replied to in hours, an instant message in seconds. But if a letter takes days, if not a week to arrive, then we put more effort into making the letter worth the wait. Perhaps I should start replying to those letters of a decade ago. I could probably use email, but of course, I should reply by post so that my reply shall have the same permanence as the letters that still lie in that box in the corner of my room.