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Well, it's also about the durability of the information medium. Clay tablets have survived remarkably well and they give us a better view into ancient Mesopotam
by iwwr 12y ago
Well, it's also about the durability of the information medium. Clay tablets have survived remarkably well and they give us a better view into ancient Mesopotamia (particularly the ancient Ur-III dinasty) than later centuries' records kept as papyrus or strips of wood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Dynasty_of_Ur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Dynasty_of_Ur
- basseq 12y agoVery true. And the medium (among other factors, like literacy) has a self-selecting component: you're not going to take the time (money, etc.) to make clay tablets out of everything. There wasn't a clay-tablet-Twitter back in the Neo-Sumerian Empire. As modern medium becomes a) cheap, b) ubiquitous, and c) durable, there's no reason to "edit" ourselves. Maybe that's a good thing: it would give future anthropologists a treasure trove of information. But again, my concern is that we'll end up with so much quantity that the quality data/recordings/thinking get subsumed, and future humans think we worship cats. (All those photos! And captions! And videos! I for one bow to our feline overlords.)