Scanning question (Is destruction of old tech docs a moral crime?)

-----Original Message----- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Guy Dunphy via cctalk Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2019 11:00 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: Scanning question (Is destruction of old tech docs a moral crime?) I'm posting a private email (anonymized) and my reply because it's a significant issue. I agree that when historical documents are lost without even any kind of digital copy made, that's the worst. However I was pretty careful to preceded that quoted paragraph with conditionals. Specifically referring to a case where someone has a rare work, that isn't in danger of falling apart, and there's no good reason why they couldn't wait till better scanning methods became available, and they destroy it to produce a crappy quality digital image. Thus ensuring there can never be a high quality digital copy and the rare physical original is forever gone. That's criminal. A high level crime against humankind. Where it's done in bulk to entire collections, it _is_ the cultural equivalent of genocide. I don't care if you disagree. Could it be that you are upset because you do this (destroy docs), and don't like to be accused of being a criminal? I am sure that the future WON'T take your position on this. They are going to be sooo pissed, that so many old works were destroyed and all they have left is crappy quality horrible-looking two-tone scans. This is _already_ the case with many electronics instrument manuals. There are so many people who think that the physical manuscript is unimportant, and nothing matters other than posting a minimally readable smallest-possible-file online, with the least effort and so it's OK to destroy the original for convenience. Private reply noted. Still going to repost on the list, as from anon. Guy ----- If I may summarize/generalize, Guy, I think that your point is that there are Technical Artifacts and there are Cultural Artifacts -- and the two sets overlap to some degree. Where the overlap lies is subject to great debate, IMO. Most of us probably wouldn't destroy a Cultural Artifact (e.g., Taliban destruction of Buddha of Bamiyan statue) but many might destroy a Technical Artifact in the belief that its overt information content defines its value, and that one that value has been captured digitally the Technical Artifact effectively lives on in that form. The corpus is merely that ... At what point do you believe that a "mere" Technical Artifact becomes a Cultural one -- where the latter presumptively comes accompanied by a Requirement to Preserve? Being the "last known survivor" of a particular piece of hardcopy seems both an inadequate basis for determination in general, and operationally it's a pretty weak method since "last known" becomes dependent on a Registry of sorts (and likely requires good provenance to preclude forgeries, else expect a flood of ACTUAL TELETYPE REPORT OF APOLLO MOON LANDING ... :->). In your perspective is Artistic Merit an important consideration in determining Cultural value, and thus Requirement to Preserve? How does one judge that? As much as I like hardcopy Technical Artifacts for various reasons, I have difficulty with the concept that all hardcopy, even the very last known original, is worth (in the ROI sense, to include proper archiving and maintenance) preserving. I'm reminded a bit of "A Canticle for Leibowitz"! paul