The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Low-tech and biodegradable, paper still central to genealogy
This story was published July 18, 2000
The relentless march of communications technology has done wonders for civilization.
New inventions have advanced record keeping from the time when our first aboriginal ancestor picked up a sharp rock and drew a picture on a rock, to modern engineers who created the computer chip and related technologies that allow us to write hundreds of volumes on a disk small enough to slip into a shirt pocket.
I don't know what will replace current computer technologies, but be assured, the computers we use today will be obsolete, even archaic in our children's time.
Try to keep in mind that the Sumerians' use of clay tablets was as astounding a leap in human communications in their time as the invention of the computer is in our own age.
Just think of it. The tablets were portable writing! Writing that could be stored and saved. Saved so long some still exist after 5,000 or 6,000 years!
Of course paper was itself an astounding revolution, so much more portable and easier to write and draw upon. As human history goes, paper is a relatively modern invention. Most probably it was invented by the Chinese around 105 A.D.
Although also a highly perishable medium, paper has served civilization very well indeed, and that especially includes genealogists.
I presume we've all heard the hype about the paperless office, a silly prophecy that computers would eliminate the need for paper. At least so far in this revolution, computers have accelerated the use of paper!
Hold that thought a minute.
Some genealogists have naively thought they could rely on computer technologies - computer hard drives, floppy disks, magnetic tape, CD-ROMs and the like. Who needs paper, that antiquated technology? Paper turns brittle. Turns color. Molds. Disintegrates.
Millions of computer-happy genealogists, including me, are scanning family photographs into their computers. All the camera companies are coming out with digital cameras that use no film.
Who needs paper?
We all do.
Listen to this warning from the National Media Lab.
Modern information storage devices are subject to aging, just as paper, clay tablets and rocks are. They also are subject to accidental corruption.
And, the National Media Lab warns, some of the technologies used to record data are becoming obsolete. Retrieval of data is threatened by the disappearance of the machines necessary to read it.
Magnetic tape, floppy disks, hard disks and videotape can survive for only about 10 years and that CD-ROM is more vulnerable to damage and information loss than originally was thought, according to the National Archives.
Charged with preserving a nation's history, the National Archives maintains a collection of out-of-use data storage devices dating to early steel-wire sound recorders that it uses to transfer old recordings and data onto new formats.
Some of my older readers will remember wire recordings. The voices on many of these recordings remain in excellent condition, but how many of us have a wire player to listen to them?
When I quit producing a radio program that I once did for Washington State University, I carefully copied all the programs onto a reel of audio tape.
I figure when I retire it will be fun to listen to them. The program was "Thought for Food," a reversal of the usual "food for thought." The topic was the science behind our food supply. Pretty clever, huh?
Now I wonder where I'm going to find a reel-to-reel tape recorder to listen to my old programs.
All of our modern, digital and analog technologies are ephemeral. Here today, gone tomorrow, or the next day.
So what's the point?
Remember what I was saying about paper? Paper is the answer. Of course we can't hear voices or see moving pictures on paper, but foolish indeed is the genealogist or family historian who trusts his or her life's work to computer technologies.
There is absolutely nothing like them for creating our genealogies and histories. Nothing! But like the wise man who built his house upon stone, the wise genealogist preserves his genealogy on paper. Yes, paper.
Kept from flood and fire, most paper will still be around in a couple hundred years. No one, not even Bill Gates, knows whether technologies will exist in 200 years to read the documents we are creating today.
The sign my mother used to have in her bathroom says it all: "No job is complete until the paperwork is done." Technology isn't going to change that. Not in our lifetimes.
Now go genealogize.