This post is about the importance of paper. I am a supporter of the campaign group Keep Me Posted, which wants to ensure that companies such as banks and utilities allow their customers to continue to receive paper statements, without paying extra for them, and that people are not forced to handle payments and keep financial records on line. Some people are not computer literate, don’t have access to the internet or simply prefer the permanence and clarity of paper records. This was brought home to me last week when I visited a display of the treasures of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which included a score of Handel’s Messiah, the first folio of Shakespeare’s plays, a poem by Sappho and a copy of Magna Carta (1215 – there will be a lot about it next year). All of these are on papyrus, parchment or paper that has lasted for hundreds and sometimes over a thousand years. We can see the author’s amendments written in the margins as he or she refines the earlier drafts.
Today however it is regarded as good practice not only to make new records only on line but even to digitise old ones. The Law Society Library is currently exhibiting old computer discs, tapes and cassettes that are unreadable now after only 40 years. We are in danger of destroying our historical records and important data by keeping them electronically, when it is so obvious that they will become inaccessible very soon. Which family does not have hundreds of photographs stored in their computers, never printed off, with the risk that if the technology changes or the password is forgotten, the family memories will vanish? How much nicer to have boxes and albums of old photographs, sepia or black and white they may be, but so easy to hand on from one generation to another. Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep very important material in paper form, not least because we know how often IT projects go wrong and vital memory sticks are lost? How ever will future historians be able to read our letters and diaries now that they are all on line and likely to die with their authors?
Dear Baroness,
I am very much in favor of this. In addition to the reasons you have given, there is a growing mountain of evidence that electronic information is fueling cyber criminals on many levels. The more these papers go to digital format, the easier it will become to commit identity theft. The fact that power bills and health care bills count towards a 200 point identity makes moving them to digital format an increased danger for the people.
If we accept that our details are monitored through our mail accounts, then the more people can gather online, the more danger any person will be in.
In opposition, partially, I must also voice that our world is changing. The world is becoming a digital world and as such, paper is likely to move out of our view, this will still take some time. The digital dangers of losing data and keeping data safe is still an issue for some time to come, whilst the new age innovators would like us to all move to a cloud where all data is always backed up, the initial dangers will remain to exist. Who has access? Several parties as recent as last October 2013 voiced that the cloud has vulnerabilities on more then one level.
This is all a clear indication that it is not just about the “keep me posted” group. It is a sign that those forcing people to a digital data source, without the free printed alternative might have to accept damages that cybercrime brings upon their customers.
In regards to your point of lost data, that has been shown only 3 months ago with a bug in the Playstation 4, when the system had data crashes, people had to reinstall and download all their games and save files. Those who had no backup on the cloud lost hundreds of gaming hours. This was per player, how large is the loss when one cloud server gets corrupted? Even though it is a gaming console, this next gen device shows that there are cloud and interface issues that have not been resolved.
“keep me posted” has more validity and should get more visibility then even they realised.
Highly amusing! I’ve come across two cases of historic-al revisionism recently. black rod advised me that I hade never set foot in the houses of Parliament before about a month ago or that if I had, it was only once, and that my memory was playing tricks with my imagniation. He’s only been at the job of Estate Administrator for a couple of years so I forgave him for his innocence.
Can a medical record suffer from the same disease, that the staff who transfered all the hard copy records, to digitized version, missed a lot, tidied up even more, in such a way that
a medical record is no longer the record of the patient in question, even though the GP, (reactionary that he often is) will insist that it is cast in stone!
Here’s to the revolutionary medical record! Bunkum!
I’m still getting plenty of pleasure from William Dalyrymple’s book about the Sufis. Now that was a record, learned in song and dance, from time immemorial! Perhaps the witch doctor had the same task! Do a bit of dancing to help with the medical records! Haw! Haw!Haw! I shall recommend it to my GP.
first folio of Shakespeare’s plays, a poem by Sappho and a copy of Magna Carta (1215 – there will be a lot about it next year). All of these are on papyrus, parchment or paper that has lasted for hundreds and sometimes over a thousand years. We can see the author’s amendments written in the margins as he or she refines the earlier drafts.
Antiquarian book manship leaves a lot to be desired, but the Papal archives must be the best in the world. The first folio of Shakespeare’s plays may not be a big deal at all; that was only the 1560s was it not, with which some of the Colleges may not have much difficulty.
Mause will be very bored by my refering to Hywel dda and the Welsh book of Law. Cyfraidd Hywel. Enoch Powell assisted with the editing of a fine research work in to the first hard copy editions available in about the 13thC. Before that most of the book was “remembered” for about 300 years.
It is said that the skill of remembering is lost with literacy.
I am not suggesting that Welsh lawyers before the 13thC danced their way to remembering the whole of the Book of Law of their forefather,(Cadell al Grufyydd ap Hywel Dda 945ce) but it might well have helped.
Law was a family trade, the Brehonsters(Brewer) of Ireland, the itinerant lawyers would have been lawyers, father to son, for many generations, sitting beneath their father’s skirts in rather the way that Edward Kemp described himself as doing (R3 recently)beneath those of his father, Bishop Kemp of Chichester, whilst administering the sacraments, of recent year, and peeping out to see how the celebrants (including me)were getting on! I send them my complements.
You are absolutely right about additional charges for an invoice on paper plus an invoice for the telephone call listings or whatever is being sold. Sky charge £2,00 per month for the privilege of knowing, on paper, what they are charging for. One of the reasons being, if you are not equipped with a proper computer and printer you have no proof of said charges or their legitimacy.
Likewise, if we remove paper from any of the documents you list, there is no proof of what is said in a document. Anything can be altered and changed on line to suit, as is already carried out by Wiki. And nothing any authority can say or do will be able to change that, as, particularly now, the government or governments collude in anything they want to hand out as fact. Ukraine is a very good first hand example of that.
We do know this action is not knew because Orwell wrote of it frequently, and because newspaper reports were/are often changed or altered. But, the chances of an original copy being available made this less easy to cover.
The entire mess we have now is grotesque which sickens.
The old discs and tapes may be unreadable, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the data on them is lost. Storage technologies change but the beauty of digital data is that it can be copied with no loss of information. In fact, you can make multiple copies, better known as backups. Museums may have documents from hundreds of years ago, but these only represent a small fraction of the documents that were produced at that time. The rest have long been lost. Some digital data will be lost because it is badly managed, but if people handle it correctly, move data to new formats when necessary, and keep backups, our records should be more complete and future proof.
As for diaries, perhaps the modern equivalent is a blog. There is a problem with websites disappearing. I’m always disappointed when a discontinued blog goes offline. Historical posts shouldn’t be removed. Sites such as the Internet Archive (archive.org) and the National Archives’ UK government web archive help to keep a record of dead sites, but there’s some way to go.
In general, I think digital archival methods should allow us to maintain a more secure and complete historical record than paper documents ever did.
Digital files in themselves are not a bad thing assuming they are sufficiently backed up. However the real danger is storing things in proprietary undocumented formats. That’s when you run the risk of not being able to re-read them in 40 years time when the original manufacturer no longer supports the program and you have no hardware to run it on.
Memory!
People with Alzheimer’s must have a different problem!
There was something highly significant in the way the first printed books were constructed in the early 17thCentury.
Was it the fact of the 16 folds? What’s that deca-hexagesimal, which determined the ease with which books could be printed?
If you try to cosntruct a hard copy reading book you will find out! A hard copy computer, called a book, so that you dont have to read it upside down, backwards or from the middle.
The beginnings of mass literacy.
I agree entirely! Nuff said! Well not quite.
As this is Maundy Thursday the Queen today handed out Maundy coins in a service at Blackburn Cathedral. The lucky recipients 88 men and women aged over 70 were presented with the coins in recognition of their work in the church and community.
So what has this to do with paper? HMRC!
HMRC are sticklers for paper work, they love the stuff. And of course the banks have to go along by sending out paper statements of tax paid for the previous tax year and everybody in receipt of a taxable income gets a P60 just to remind them of how much tax was paid.
Now these needy 70+ year olds are likely to be on an income much less than their tax free allowance yet they will have to declare the Maundy money as income for legal reasons. If a 70+ has an income in excess of his or her tax allowance then they will pay tax on what was received.
But what of the millions of others that are paying tax below this threshold perhaps at a measly rate 0.1%. They too will be reminded by paper of the tax they have unjustly paid.
Anybody on an income below their tax free threshold will not be advised by HMRC if the overpayment is less than £50 nor will they be automatically refunded. If however they have under paid by less than £50 HMRC will adjust their tax allowance and recoup it that way.
This unfortunate minority can reclaim these small amounts by filling in a Form R40. The problem is the cost of a postage stamp is much more than what could be recovered so people do not bother.
HMRC are Salami Slicing and making millions off the back of our elderly and poor. Fortunately, the Post Office does not always frank the postage stamp when you receive a letter. Cut them out and give these to the 88 in recognition of their work in the church and community instead of the money.
They can then send off for free those Form R40’s and reclaim what is rightly theirs even if it is just one penny. Perhaps the Lord Speaker might whisper in the Queen’s ear “give them postage stamps instead of the money” next time she trips over her.
Ref: Salami Slicing, Penny Shaving
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing