A Binary Life: Is the Digital Age a new Dark Age?

This post appeared originally at The Whine Sisters

Fair warning — I’m thinking deep thoughts about the digital age in which we are living. Or semi-deep, anyway, as I’m sitting here at the computer, drinking coffee and scrolling through Smithsonian magazine.

I’m thinking about the history of the world. (I warned you) We started out pretty vague, right? Clans, tribes, groups of humans, with their oral histories and stories passed down among groups and families.

Eventually storytelling shifted to songs or poems, because that’s easier to remember than just your average story. But then writing came along, and it was great for keeping records.

Cuneiform, hieroglyphs, etc. Words carved into stone tablets–it doesn’t get more permanent than that, right? But then those cultures discovered early paper, but paper doesn’t last. So from an historian’s point of view, there’s a dark age when the paper records are missing, but the earlier stone records are still around.

Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt both have such periods. And it’s a shame, because even if the stone is just telling how many bushels of wheat a customer bought, that’s still significant.

So, fast forward to today’s world. Here we all are ensconced in our digital age, saving trees (which is a good thing) but recording so many significant transactions in digital forms. And I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen five hundred years from now.

Will the technology still exist to let historians see what we were doing? Or will so much of our culture be lost in a digital haze? (I suppose the books could be lost in 500 years, too, but there’s definitely a higher level of permanence there. Perceived, anyway. Maybe digital is more permanent…so long as you have the key for retrieving the information.)

It’s a particularly interesting question for me because I’m trying to do so much digitally now. Even my journal is digital, since I lost the habit of writing one by hand years ago–or if I do it’s on a “notebook” on my iPad.

Now I send tidbits and photos into an Evernote notebook directly from my iPhone. Voila, instant record. For me at least. For those historians (or alien invaders), that information may not be accessible at all. Of course, I’m not sure the historians or the Aliens care what movie I saw last weekend or what my kids are up to!

How about y’all? Are we opening ourselves up to a whole new Dark Age? Does this stuff bug you at 2am? What Deep Thoughts are on your mind lately?

P.S. - my current book -- Release Me -- spent three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and is still on the USA Today bestseller list (its 7th week!) Color me psyched! Have you got your copy yet?

P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!

XXOO

--J.K.