The Grand Illusion
West of Cedar City, on land grazed by herds of sheep in the not-too-distant past, apartment and condominium buildings are springing up seemingly everywhere. That’s unfortunately not too surprising, given that last year Iron County tied for the fastest county population growth in the state of Utah. And those numbers understate the actual number of people, because the enrollment at Southern Utah University has doubled in the past 11 years to almost 16,000 students, and most of them (roughly 70%) don’t come from Iron County/Cedar City.
One aspect of all this home building I find most interesting is that, from what I can tell, over 80% of those apartments/condominiums are constructed of pseudo-stucco, i.e., a thin layer of mortar over one half inch OSB (Oriented Strand Board) clad in Tyvek (waterproof plastic). In my opinion, this isn’t exactly terribly permanent, but this growing impermanence in housing mirrors impermanence elsewhere.
This is especially true in the book business. I have a collection of mass market paperbacks, many of which are over forty years old. Some of them are a bit fragile, admittedly, but they’re readable.
On the other hand, since my publisher went digital, I’ve created back-up files for each book in place of hard copies. The only problem is that many of the back-up files are essentially “lost,” since the earliest were on thin floppies, the next were on 3 ½ inch hard floppies, the next on CDs. I never kept the older computers for obvious reasons. All of which means that, effectively, those fragile paperbacks are outlasting the electronic formats.
As others have pointed out, at least some of the data and records from the Mercury and Apollo space programs has been “lost” because the systems with which to read that data have been replaced by newer systems using totally different codes.
Somehow it seems rather amusingly odd that someone can read the words and songs of the Sumerian poetess/priestess Enheduanna written some 4300 years ago on a clay tablet, but more and more data and history are being recorded on electronic media that will vanish far sooner, either from power failures or planned obsolescence. One of the greatest cultural losses is likely to be in the area of classical music where the failure of the copyright system means that thousands of works are slowly moldering away because few have the time and/or resources to preserve them, and even those preserved “electronically” won’t last that long.
As for the semi-temporary apartments springing up everywhere, in the global scheme of things, they’re no great loss – except to whoever owns them when they collapse or are demolished in the comparative near future.
On building materials, here in the UK there was (and is) a push to use plastic double glazing. Only it needs replacement within 15 years and installation companies can liquidate themselves to avoid warranty issues.
My window frames are hardwood and 40 years old. When I had double glazing fitted, I was told the frames were sound and the rebates sufficient for new glazing panels.
The way things are going over here in eco land, we will soon be forbidden from using wood.
Stored in cool, dark conditions, archival grade optical media could last well over a century. The format is standardized, and given the existence of such media, will likely remain supported for a long time. BD drives for computers have been around for 20 years and are not likely to be going away any time soon.
Most (BD) drives can read such media, but it may take a special drive to write it.
Even acid free paper would do best under similar storage. Stone tablets in a particularly durable stone could beat all those, but the writing difficulty is considerable, and the storage density very low.
And even paper, papyrus, and vellum was copied not just for distribution but preservation, so possible digital media migration every few decades is not without precedent.
Early digital media were pretty bad though (but you can still get new USB microfloppy drives – and media, not that it would make much sense to write new media in such a format).
The so called digital dark age isn’t necessarily likely “just” via tachnological changes in the reading/writing/storage space. That issue is also prevalent in businesses that are choosing willfully to destroy records at predetermined dates. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I worked as a scientist in a large pharma. The lawyers there determined that various types of recorded/archival data would be destroyed at dates between a few years and 30 years. That certainly makes sense for some of the data generated within a large corporation. But I was stunned when it was also applied to basic scientific research, aka, laboratory research notebooks. Keep in mind that famous scientist’s notebooks have been digitized and are available to the public to read. But that is not necessarily true of a lot of corporate scientific research. One has to count on external publications now to permanently capture the research, and that external publications is but a small sample of the work done. Blame it on the lawyers.
I like to think maybe Enheduanna’s words held and hold lasting value…