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Re: [ARSCLIST] was Mass Digitization-now why preserve
----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Miller" <karl.miller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> So what is the value of our recorded history. How does one place its worth
within a context of what is valued by our current society?
>
Well, I'll confine my comment to this statement alone...!
Our current society, having for the most part been raised with a TV set as
surrogate parent as well as having increasingly discredited concepts like
morals and ethics as "old-fashioned, useless bullroar"...values only things,
concrete or intellectual...which can be useful in improving their social/
hierarchical position relative to other humans. Worse yet, we humans have
increasingly become a conformist, "fad"-driven species!
Our younger people (as they probably always have) are entranced by new
"recorded hits," which they MUST have to prove they are part of the
(self-appointed) "elite" in their group(s). Our older people are primarily
interested in re-living their youth (when they were young, attractive [as
they think they recall] and didn't need any little blue pills...) through
the medium of sound recordings that were part of that past era. When
classical music gains any reputation, it is because it is perceived as
the "chosen music of the social elite"...!
Given all that, I personally view "...a context of what is valued by our
current society" to do nothing more than more-than-adequately demonstrate
the dead-end "race to the bottom" that defines the XXI Jahrhundert!
To me, "history" on any level...family (aka genealogy), local, state/
provincial, national, international or ANY subset of any of those has
an important function! It tells us where we WERE...where we ARE...how
we got from the former to the latter...and what can be extrapolated
therefrom as far as possible futures!
Further, as an Asperger's-Syndrome sufferer, and thus somewhat
obsessive-compulsive...I am enthusiastic and fascinated by collecting
data, entering it into some sort of digital database, and seeing if I
can see any recognizable trends...in fact, im something exists in more
than one form, I immediately set out to find all the examples and
compare them, to see if anything is proven or disproven!
IMHO, we are fortunate that there still exist a few folks like myself...
who evaluate objects and phenomena on something other than "How will
this help *ME* to become richer, more famous, or otherwise socially/usw,
superior to all those other clots...?!?!)
Remember that folks like myself achieve maximum satisfaction through
finally finding a copy of Acme 123, which enables us to fill in that
annoying blank space between our data records (or sorted phonorecords)
that separated Acme-122 and Acme-124!
This is as close as I can come to a coherent explanation (but I figure
that my quest for Acme 123, or data thereon, is significantly less
dangerous to our collective future than the chap down the block's
quest for the biggest, fastest and loudest SUV in his neghbourhood
might be...!
Steven C. Barr