Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

17 February 2004

HP To Digitize Time

I think that's a movie.

No, sorry, it's Time not time.

Here. Reuters is reporting that HP today announced this:

Computer and printer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. will create a digital archive containing every issue of Time magazine published, which Time will then make freely available to subscribers on its Web site, the companies said on Tuesday.
HP said the digital archive would total more than 4,000 issues from 1923 to the present and be available in May.

Several years ago I ripped some CDs and started listening to MP3s whenever I was at my desk instead of carrying discs around. Most of my working days have been in Silicon Valley where there's usually a spare hard drive sitting around asking to be filled.

But drives weren't as big then as they are now, so I was selective, and even if I'd had the space, I didn't feel like I had the time to rip my entire collection. I figured I'd eventually get to all of the music I was interested in if I just ripped on demand. Feel like listening to something, look on your computer, it's not there, go to the shelf, dust it off.

But a funny thing happens when you reach a certain threshold. You stop going back to the shelf. In fact — back up — you stop feeling like listening to some albums because you forget about them entirely.

So then last month my wife went on a ripping binge, which is distinct from a rip-roaring binge, but never mind that. She systematically worked her way through our collection and ripped them all, and I was amazed at how many of my favorites I'd been without. Not golden oldies but stuff from 2 or 3 or 5 or 8 years ago, forgotten. And not crap, either, but good stuff.

For the first time I started to wonder about this fear that I've heard from people who don't otherwise seem like Luddites but are nevertheless concerned that as we digitize the world we'll lose track of the things that aren't digitized. The phenomenon is counterintuitive: the more you digitize, the less you miss what you're not seeing.

It used to be that if I couldn't find something at, say, AltaVista, then I'd try HotBot or some other search engine. Nowadays, if I don't find something in Google, I stop there unless I'm unusually motivated. Google has become really good, we all know, and its content has passed the threshold. Not there? Must not be online.

Steven Johnson wrote in Slate a while back that more and more scholarly papers are in Google. They're online as PDFs. Therefore, an increasing number of researchers use Google, increasingly. Increasing, increasing! Which, Johnson says, is leading a fundamental shift in research, from looking at books to looking at papers, because they're easier to get your hands on and, on the other end, easier to distribute. [Johnson's other points amount to nitpicks about Google's algorithms and the relatively crude ways that it indexes knowledge, but I'm fascinated by the implication that what's easily available drastically alters our standard processes for knowledge reaping and sowing.]

So HP will digitize Time. Lots of magazines have archives, and I suppose those archives will go deeper and further over time. Time. Over time. Archives will expand. Most of them. And the journals that are out of print, or defunct, or don't bring in dollars, or are otherwise forgotten... will they be pushed even further under the rug in the age of limitless information?

Limitless only in the sense that we can't currently see its limits. They zig-zag.

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