There has been a recent flurry of interest in the pros and cons of evolving information technologies, not only in the library literature where such debates have raged for decades, but even in the more general scholarly literature and the popular press. Much of this debate has been stirred by the writings of noted author, Nicholson Baker. Thanks to a cache of archives recently discovered underneath a pile of old newspapers being removed from the British Library, I have learned that Mr. Baker comes by his concerns thanks to a long, nay, epic family tradition. Herewith, a timeline of the history of information technology, annotated with the recently discovered material:
circa 4000 BCE -- First human script begins to appear in Sumeria. Bakar of Ur goes on a tour of the Sumerian city-states, speaking on the topic: "Vocal Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Oral Tradition". He decries writing as an unproven technology, whose symbols will change their meanings with time, whereas oral communication has successfully passed along the wisdom of the gods for centuries. Excerpt: "And what crude scratchings on clay can convey the subtle nuance of emotion of a skilled teller of tales? The rush to embrace this new fad of writing can only result in the loss of meaning vital to the scholar."
circa 2000 BCE -- Egyptian scribes develop papyrus as a new medium for writing. Papyrus scrolls begin to replace clay tablets. Nykobakher of Memphis denounces the trend in his work: "Bent Double: Libraries and the Assault on Clay". In this work, carved into a piller near Pharoah's palace, Nykobakher points out that the libraries of the day are replacing clay tablets with papyrus scrolls not because papyrus is a superior technology, but because the new generation of librarians are lazy and unwilling to develop the stooped posture which their predecessors accepted with pride, the mark of carrying hundreds of pounds of clay tablets from one shelf to another every day. Excerpt: "And what will happen in the inevitable fires of the dry season? The fires of Ra strengthen clay while they destroy papyrus!... Shall we lose the intellectual savor of recognizing a familiar scribe's thumbprint in the tablet of Thoth for the anonymous smears of ink?"
circa 300 CE -- The codex begins to displace the scroll in the Greco-Roman world. Nicofilius Pistor of Alexandria circulates a scroll on the subject entitled: "Double Roll: Libraries and the Assault on the Scroll". Pistor argues that libraries are rushing to adopt the unproven codex technology just because codices are more compact and easier to shelve. Excerpt: "Any text too long to fit on a normal scroll is too long; codex publication will only encourage the rampant decline in the art of concise writing...Unrolling a scroll causes the reader to absorb the text at the speed and in the order which the writer intended. Codex readers jump around from one "page" to another, negating the skill of the writer in ordering his thoughts. What can compare with the feel of a scroll carefully unrolled?..."
1455 CE -- Johannes Gutenberg prints his first book using the movable type printing press. Baecker von Nickel of Wittenburg some years later issues his book, "Double Copies: Libraries and the Assault on the Scriptorium". Von Nickel raises the cudgels against the rush of libraries to cheap press-printed books and the consequent decline of the art of hand-copied, illuminated manuscripts. Excerpt: "Before the invention of the printing press, readers could be assured that any book represented a noble expression of the human mind. A scribe's time was too valuable to waste on copying worthless ephemera. Now, in the era of the press, any haphazard maunderings are as likely to see print as the works of the great philosophers....And what of even the great philosophers, when their thoughts are being transcribed, not by highly trained monks, but by semi-literate typesetters? Already we have heard of a printing of the Sacred Scriptures in which a careless apprentice left the word "not" out of the Sixth Commandment!...As the scribes and illuminators are driven out of work, how will the educated reader find any beauty in the crude products of an unfeeling press, compared to a work in which the very heart and soul of the scribe shines forth in every line??"
1901 CE -- Reflecting the rise of card catalogs in libraries, the Library of Congress begins selling its own catalog cards to libraries around the country. Pennyfather Baker publishes a book decrying this trend, "Double Entry: Libraries and the Assault on the Book Catalog." Excerpt: "Library administrators have developed a "furniture complex" in their rush to have the biggest, most elegant sets of catalog drawers, all in fine hardwood with shiny brass handles. Hundreds of dollars and many yards of space are wasted accomodating what was handled perfectly well by the classic book catalogs...Librarians claim that the card catalog more easily accomodates new entries, but to the historian and scholar, the order of acquisition reflected in the bound book catalog volumes in itself speaks of the labor of decades of painstaking acquisition...I have heard many horror stories of drawers of cards inadvertantly spilled, torn or lost, where a sturdier book catalog would have been undisturbed...With the Library of Congress shipping standardized cards, what will happen to the individual charm of a locally written card, in the library hand of some dedicated librarian of days gone by? Each local note, each curlicue of script conveys meaning to the heart and mind of the historian of knowledge."
Truly it may be said that no matter what the era, no matter what the technology, there have always been a Baker ready to point the way...backward.