Why I Love Paper

摘要

Now that the Matrix Reloaded is out on DVD, I rented the original Matrix once more, for old times' sake. (Yes, I now, we're now waxing nostalgic over movies only four years old.) I was struck by the relatively low-tech way that Neo battles the "sentinels" in both movies, by using an electromagnetic pulse. One good pulse and all those nasty probes are history. What's sobering is to realize that we're vulnerable to a slow version of EMP right now. Think for a moment about how much information we maintain solely in electronic format, with no acid-free paper backup. According to the "How Much Information" project conducting in 2002 by the University of California's School of Information Management and Systems, printed material of all kinds made up less than .003% of the total storage of information. Ten percent was on film (predominantly photographs and x-rays), which is relatively stable, at least if you take the 10-year view. But about 90% of the stored information was on magnetic storage media-PC disk drives and servers.