And What If Plato Had Been Written Down Digitally? The Dangers of Relying Too Much on High Tech Records of Our Culture

Three things this week have started me thinking about the dangers involved in consecrating all our thoughts to electronic media. The first is the latest chapter in a philosophy text that Lukas has been translating for the last several months from French to English. He’s just about done, and I’ve agreed to give it quick look to see if I can suggest any changes to make the English more readable. So far what he’s given me chapters on the presocratics, Plato and Aristotle, which reminded me how much of the thought of the Ancients has been lost, and how much we owe to Arab scholars who kept the texts alive during the long centuries when the West had forgotten them.

Then last weekend when I was at Kamloops, I discovered to my surprise that one of the prime movers (to indulge in a little philosophic joke) was philosopher Bruce Baugh, whose students quoted me Plato and Socrates as we were walking around town Saturday morning. I was impressed once again at how long lasting is the influence of those thinkers of ancient Greece.

Thirdly the Writers’ Union of Canada’s list serve has been buzzing about the demise of the book as we know it: the latest link was a link to an Inside Higher Ed story of a debate among librarians about whether libraries should just forget about print. The story starts off: “Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” said Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University. “Kaput. Finito. And we need to move on to a new concept of what the academic library is.”

But what happens when the electronic media on which we are storing journals and scanned books deteriorates? Who is going to keep up with changes in storage technique? Is anyone anywhere printing all that stuff out so that someone can access it in a low tech way?

I fear not. Twenty years ago there was a great hue and cry about switching to acid free paper in order to safeguard books since so many printed between 1850 and 1950 were beginning to fall apart. We seemed to have solved that problem only to begin conserving our collective wisdom on even more delicate media—on and off circuits which we need specialized equipment to read.