No change or advance in technology can truly alter humanity's crisis with itself.

From the days up to and surrounding Homer, the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Saxons, Anglo-Normans and Anglo-Saxons, and Biblical events; from the Chaucerian colloquial schism, to the Renaissance, Reformation and Post-Reformation England, the Enlightenment, the Romantics, Transcendentalists, Realists, Modernists, Gothic Revivalists, Post-Modernists, Surrealists, and Post-Colonialists (however loosely those terms apply) - All of them, to some degree or another, have dealt with what Faulkner so acutely characterized in his Nobel Banquet speech as “the human heart in conflict with itself.”

In every technological revolution in recent human history there have been forces of acceptance and resistance: the former claiming progress and broadened audiences as a vehicle for good, and the latter claiming a love of tradition and preservation of the current standards of excellence as the same. Either way, the technological advance occurred and, in a way, both forces were preserved by it. How else should we know that either existed at all?

As a fine example take the Oral Tradition, a mode of artistic communication shared by all societies which participate in Art as a cultural entity (at least to the extent that my experience has shown me). Even as those communities belabor the death of this tradition with the advent of writing, they nonetheless continue it, in whatever diminished form they accept, by reading these stories aloud. Or, as is the case for the most dedicated preservationists, outright mastery of that ancient art, which in their time, relative to when the work was originally produced, will largely say more about the ability to memorize and perform (or their pompousness) than the work of art itself. Such is the Bard’s tale - not of his stories, but of himself. He is the livery of his art.

So, back to today, what of the shift to digital media? What would happen if, in a purely digital world, a cataclysmic electromagnetic pulse were to wipe out all stored knowledge?  I’m sure the societies that decided to put their works on paper felt the same about fire. And they were certain of the destructive powers of fire. They dealt with it every day. It was necessary for their survival. In that respect, how many of us can claim to have experienced an electromagnetic pulse? How many of us can be certain that a cataclysmic EMP is anything other than theoretical? Or at the very least, require something so catastrophic that we would decide, as a species, not to pursue our own annihilation? Rather, just leave it to the heavens - the Sun - to blast us with a gigantic solar flare. If we’re lucky, someone will have developed a technology that allows us to survive it.

So, really, without trying to sound callous - why worry? Why not embrace whatever new audiences these emergent technologies provide and leave the consequences to a history that’s being written with each word, graphic, infographic, tweet, instagram, Something Drawn, blog post, tumblr update, ebook, or for those lucky few, Printed Page that hits the market? We write our future just as fervently as we preserve our past - so long as the act is carried out it will be preserved, or else bear itself and its creator forward in the attempt. 

Of course, these views can be seen as idealistic, which for some may even discredit them. Such is their privilege. At least the conversation shall continue.