10 Aug
2012
10 Aug
'12
11:59 a.m.
Electronics are simply going to fail no matter if
you use them or not. Most
electronic components simply can't last forever.
Nothing lasts forever. Get used to it.
But using electronics makes forever a much shorter time - there are
bushels of engineering studies on component reliability out there if
you do not believe me.
Oh, I believe you. Althoguh I suspect power cycling can do more harm than
leavign things running.
It is also an observed, and well-documetned fact that many pigments fade
or change colour under exposure to light. Particularly near-UV, but
visible light will do it too. So that displaying an Old Master painting
is going to damage it.
And yet art galleries do not keep their paintings in totally dark rooms.
The whole point of a painint is to be viewed, and to do that takes light.
Of course they are careful about the ligth they use, and keep some
particualrly fragile examples in dimly lit rooms. But they still display
them, for all it will damage them in the end.
And a particular Old Master painting is a lot rarer, and a lot harder to
restore, than a classic computer.
-tony