This isn’t quite right.
How many copies of the Bible do you suppose LOC holds? Is it redundancy to have one printed in the 16th century and another in the 18th century? With the same text?
I don’t think it is. Books are not just the text inside of them.
No, I don’t think so.
In order for you to possibly see why, I’d like you to get an EFS-formatted SCSI-1 5.25 in. HD and have an iPad read it.
Sure. Right after you get a microfiche and have an iPad read it.
Oh, I agree. But in just discussing magazines like Nat. Geo. where many copies are printed, there’s not much different.
Well!
Nice to agree every now and then.
Well:
Does this help?
Nothing. The things we want to archive permanently one hundred years ago were mostly paper. The things we will want to archive one hundred years from now will be mostly digital. I’m trying to say that archiving paper is a solved problem, archiving digital data needs to be solved. For example, the Arab Spring of 2010 made great use of Twitter. I think that’s worth archiving and fortunately the Library of Congress is doing that.
Never had a subscription but I hear 'ya. It sucks all around what has happened there. It’s like the Chinese just bought all rights to the American flag. Sad.
Regardless of the archival/longevity issue, there is a more pressing problem – the presentation (and doing of) science is getting more and more corrupted by politics/business. Having someone like Murdoch buy NG is just another step along the way. The highest rated journals are also owned by large corporations (well, maybe not as large as Fox). Do we need to fear that these publishers are going to one day start insisting on an editorial say? Are they already? It would be really bad if say, Nature went the way of National Geografox. Apparently five big publishers dominate science publishing. See “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era” http://journals.plos.org/plosone,/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502
Of course by citing something in PLOS I may be sort of answering my own question . . .
I think the lesson here is that (especially for that particular example) you can archive it to print (in history journals). I don’t believe the problem of digital can be resolved anywhere near as well. You propose that such could exist, and maybe it could, but my point is print is a real solution right now that provably works over the long term.
There’s always issues with print (no pun intended), but it’s not necessary that print be a perfect solution, merely that it works well enough for the scope of the problem.
I hate to say it, but maybe Murdoch came at the right time to deliver the scythe to Nat. Geo. It’s been lingering for years, and yeah, there’s problems with the art direction which seriously annoy me, but I still love the magazine and will continue to read it.
Everything dies. Maybe it’s better Murdoch is given credit for killing it. But I don’t like this trend at all.
Sure. This entire thread I’ve been saying digital needs to be solved, not that whatever model of hard drive you mentioned is the solution.
When we wanted to send a message into space (the ultimate long term storage project), we put it on a golden record and bolted it to the side of the spacecraft. Decoding instructions were included on that disk. The same type of thinking can solve the digital problem.
Well hoity toity you, then. In high school, NG was my go-to source for boobs.
So you went “native”?
Still there, apparently. To the naked eye.
Someone needs to ask Jerry Hall, "So what’s it like dating the most evil man on Earth? "
I agree.
I had hoped Murdoch wouldn’t mess with it, which is why I didn’t initially cancel my subscription (giving him an enormous benefit of the doubt). But what can one expect? This is the man who folded an entire newspaper, thus laying off thousands, because a closed business can’t be sued for illicit and Illegal hacking.
[quote=“doctorow, post:1, topic:68728”]
the company fired some of its most senior, decorated staff.
[/quote]Yeah, I won’t be purchasing any more National Geographic magazines. The publication is now dead to me.
I don’t want to even see the upcoming climate change impact denial articles on “How climate change is helpful” and other bullshit.
Goodbye, National Geographic.
The days of top-down media should be dead already. There is no longer any excuse to have or complain about “big” (what does that even mean?) magazines when anyone can start their own and distribute it for free. Same thing goes for the awful state of broadcast news. Draft a charter of journalistic standards, prevent it from being sold out to robber barons, and off you go!
Sometimes you need a budget. You need professionals who do their thing full time.
A small website can’t afford to regularly send off a reporter and photographer to an obscure part of the planet. To do something well, you need money.
Newspapers have reporters whose full time job is reporting. They need resources and they need a wage.
I lament the death of newspapers and magazines. It’s being replaced with cut and paste blogs.
