5 ms·

Pen and paper doesn't have many failure modes. Put it in a fireproof safe, and it will outlive most digital media. No hacker in a foreign country will steal it,

by clnq 3y ago

Pen and paper doesn't have many failure modes. Put it in a fireproof safe, and it will outlive most digital media. No hacker in a foreign country will steal it, no one will encrypt it, no cloud provider will lose it, and no government will read it, no SSD will byte-rot it. There's really not much to be said against pen and paper.

jjav 3y ago
Indeed. I have family books from the 1800s and photo albums from the early 1900s. Zero effort was put into preserving these, they were just left on a shelf, occasionally moving from generation to generation. Except for the most obsessive & technically skilled archivists, nobody will have any photos/documents from today in 100-150 years.
hoseja 3y ago
Modern paper will disintegrate over time, something with acid.
- vixen99 3y ago
  And no need for it. I don't think I have any books printed in the first half of the 20th century with yellowing pages. That's not the case with certain publishers in the recent past who, I guess, have gone for cheap printing options.
- jmopp 3y ago
  Most printer-paper you can buy in a shop is acid-free. I still have high-school printouts from 20 years ago that show no signs of degradation. I don't think any of my own digital assets have survived from 2003 — granted I was a teenager at the time, so I did not engage in the greatest archival practices. But see the comment above: all you need to preserve paper is to make sure it doesn't get damaged, and simply eyeballing it will confirm whether or not it has.
fragmede 3y ago
Fireproof safe's, aren't. A thief could steal it out of your house, you can't access it on the go, it'll get water damaged and mold and rot. The ink will fade. You won't have a drive to read the floppy disk/CD-rom/DVD/USB-A flash drive. You can't grep it and unless you meticulously organize it, it's a jumbled pile of unopened envelopes. Cloud and digital isn't the be all and end all, but there are plenty of problems with paper.
- tomrod 3y ago
  Eventually, but all those are likely less likely than the electronic degradation. That said, keeping paper organized is hard.
- gspencley 3y ago
  > you can't access it on the go You can to the same extent that you can access a smart phone on the go. You just have to remember to bring it with you. Given how often I "forget" my smart phone at home, the "access anywhere" isn't a huge selling feature for most things to me. While I do use web-based email, I tend to prefer things like paper tickets for events and paper receipts because I actually find them to be more convenient than digital. This is because having to have a smart phone with me at all times that could get lost, stolen, damaged, malfunction etc. and is a single point of failure in the event thereof is the polar opposite of my definition of convenience. No one has made the argument that paper is without problems. Only that it has way fewer problems than digital. That, and that the businesses and shills that are trying to force digital-everything are evil monsters that belong in the same rung of hell typically reserved for murderers and people who talk at movie theatres.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    That seems like a personal problem.
- vlark 3y ago
  And yet for thousands of years we managed just fine with paper & ink.
DharmaPolice 3y ago
I think this depends on lifestyle. I know that if there's vital information on a piece of paper I need to photograph it (or type it up) and email it to myself because the paper will be lost/destroyed before too long. I could invest in a fireproof safe but it'd be another thing to move and take up space which I don't have a huge amount of. Something emailed to multiple email providers and copies stored in Dropbox, etc is unlikely to lost. And when you're dealing with a high quantity of information, good luck searching through thousands of sheets of paper for something.

by clnq 3y ago

jjav 3y ago

Indeed. I have family books from the 1800s and photo albums from the early 1900s. Zero effort was put into preserving these, they were just left on a shelf, occasionally moving from generation to generation. Except for the most obsessive & technically skilled archivists, nobody will have any photos/documents from today in 100-150 years.

hoseja 3y ago

Modern paper will disintegrate over time, something with acid.

vixen99 3y ago
And no need for it. I don't think I have any books printed in the first half of the 20th century with yellowing pages. That's not the case with certain publishers in the recent past who, I guess, have gone for cheap printing options.
jmopp 3y ago
Most printer-paper you can buy in a shop is acid-free. I still have high-school printouts from 20 years ago that show no signs of degradation. I don't think any of my own digital assets have survived from 2003 — granted I was a teenager at the time, so I did not engage in the greatest archival practices. But see the comment above: all you need to preserve paper is to make sure it doesn't get damaged, and simply eyeballing it will confirm whether or not it has.

fragmede 3y ago

Fireproof safe's, aren't. A thief could steal it out of your house, you can't access it on the go, it'll get water damaged and mold and rot. The ink will fade. You won't have a drive to read the floppy disk/CD-rom/DVD/USB-A flash drive. You can't grep it and unless you meticulously organize it, it's a jumbled pile of unopened envelopes. Cloud and digital isn't the be all and end all, but there are plenty of problems with paper.

tomrod 3y ago
Eventually, but all those are likely less likely than the electronic degradation. That said, keeping paper organized is hard.
gspencley 3y ago
> you can't access it on the go You can to the same extent that you can access a smart phone on the go. You just have to remember to bring it with you. Given how often I "forget" my smart phone at home, the "access anywhere" isn't a huge selling feature for most things to me. While I do use web-based email, I tend to prefer things like paper tickets for events and paper receipts because I actually find them to be more convenient than digital. This is because having to have a smart phone with me at all times that could get lost, stolen, damaged, malfunction etc. and is a single point of failure in the event thereof is the polar opposite of my definition of convenience. No one has made the argument that paper is without problems. Only that it has way fewer problems than digital. That, and that the businesses and shills that are trying to force digital-everything are evil monsters that belong in the same rung of hell typically reserved for murderers and people who talk at movie theatres.
- fragmede 3y ago
  That seems like a personal problem.
vlark 3y ago
And yet for thousands of years we managed just fine with paper & ink.

DharmaPolice 3y ago

I think this depends on lifestyle. I know that if there's vital information on a piece of paper I need to photograph it (or type it up) and email it to myself because the paper will be lost/destroyed before too long. I could invest in a fireproof safe but it'd be another thing to move and take up space which I don't have a huge amount of. Something emailed to multiple email providers and copies stored in Dropbox, etc is unlikely to lost. And when you're dealing with a high quantity of information, good luck searching through thousands of sheets of paper for something.