Digital Disengagement

[Jack]

There's a folder on our server labelled 'files rescued from floppies' - when you've finished on here see how many of those you can open useably without taking them to a specialist....and then of course there's the shelf of old tape-drive cassettes, 5" floppies etc etc, all full of inaccessible data from only 15-20 years ago, at least you don't need expensive specialist hardware to get info out of a book....

I got a floppy at home (oo er). Bet you can still get a 5" floppy drive to plug in. There's usually software somewhere that can convert one file into another. Open office for instance. You can plug a record player into a PC so I suspect the same goes for a tape deck.

Bet someone somewhere can even read punch cards!

The key is (will be) keeping up to date. If you change your system to a new format, convert your old files. Simple.

BTW like your new Avatar!

[Wax]

Interesting discussion, I suspect those who were not young in the days before the inter webby thingy etc might not appreciate the rapidity of change that it has initiated. It is here to stay but as yet it is unstable and to be honest costly and not so easy to use for those who have-not been brought up with it. My tame IT consultant spits feathers when anyone suggests that the internet it is in anyway secure. Everything on it is public one way or another. It is currently very much about generating cash rather than making life easier for people.

The change is so rapid that even those who have known nothing else do not necessarily know enough about the roots and origins of systems to understand how they actually work. I bet there are very few people under forty who could read punch cards. I am just waiting to see what happens when we get the first major world wide magnetic event since the invention of computers. The only reason things did not go pear shaped in 2000 was everybody prepared for it

[gwyl]

i am currently experiencing the frustration of discovering that my external hard-drive, which worked up until a few days ago, and on which i store most of my work/archaeology-related pdfs, copies of completed reports etc - not to mention personal stuff like music, piccies, irritated correspondence with HMRC etc - is not now recognised by any computer. at all. good job *cough* that there's an IT consultant out there who'll take a load of money off my hands to tell me stick it in a new hard drive box. or some such.

[Oxbeast]

@gwyl, you need some storage space in the cloud, like Dropbox or Google Docs or similar.

But the OP was not about storage formats going obselete, it was about people not wanting to to participate in digital networking. I think the 'digital tools' that h

[Wax]

@Wax

You could say the same thing about having a conversation in a pub, someone is trying to make money out of you there as well.[/QUOTE]

indeed the bar keep and the brewer do have a financial agenda but at least I can see the person who I am talking

[kevin wooldridge]

One of the problems that I face (as a university based archaeogeek) is overcoming 'misinformation' that has been/is being spread by perhaps a few of the diehard luddites to whom this thread was originally adressed. My current fave is 'You can't use GIS on a stone-age site'...this would be vaguely amusing if it wasn't coming from much the same direction as people who previously had been telling me 'You can't dig a stone-age site stratigraphically'. It could be that the 'digital age' is just the latest 'update' in a long running academic saga....

[Wax]

Digital technology is just another tool in the box, but those tools change continousley and in many cases unnecessarily. Apart from BAJR and e-mail I do not participate in digital networking because all the world and his wife have access to it. Everything you do or say on the net is there for every prospective employer to see. That includes your "private" e-mail if it is on your employers system. I do wonder if we are at the same stage the mid Victorians were with their new technologies, new colours and new materials swamped their interior design to be followed by the backlash of the aesthetic movement.

I personally do not feel the need to be connected all the time though I love the I-Pad and would panic without my mobile phone. Things that I afford by having a partner who earns considerably more than me . The real danger is in creating a sub class who cannot afford access to the latest technology. Which to be frank I could not

[Dinosaur]

I spent much of yesterday writing a report discussion of which a large chunk had to be spent dispelling the garbage that the local County Archives Service no less have posted on the interweb about the 'history' of the site - although to be fair if you check closely they do sneak in the old "it is said that" clause - no single 'fact' presented (which included dates, people and events!) was supportable in any way on available evidence (for the medieval period documentary evidence =0), yet there will now be thousands of people out there who think they know all about the place - scary! No peer review on the web. Out of interest I had a look on Wikipedia and the entry there is actually more accurate than that produced by the 'professionals' simply because it says less!....and even gives references so you can check their 'sources' and make your own mind up....eek! Never thought I'd be holding up Wiki as a paragon of academic virtue.....:0

[pdurdin]

Interesting discussion, I suspect those who were not young in the days before the inter webby thingy etc might not appreciate the rapidity of change that it has initiated. It is here to stay but as yet it is unstable and to be honest costly and not so easy to use for those who have-not been brought up with it.

Pfff, I used to volunteer in an internet access centre and regularly assisted people in their 70s and 80s in learning to use the internet: conclusion, the net is very easy to learn to use. The people who had trouble were those (mainly early 30s-40s in age) who approached it with the attitude that it was too hard to use. :p

The problem I have when it comes to archaeology and the net is that many (maybe most) heritage sites are poorly designed and developed (I probably notice this more than most: I'm a web developer). This will improve over time though. And as storage is cheap and bandwidth is getting cheaper, more and more information will become available.

The bottom line is that in any field of work or study there is something to be gained by using the internet. Learning to use it properly should only take a few hours at worst.

[Wax]

Probably should have worded myself better, Yes the internet is easy to use ....too easy. I too know people in their 80s who can use it but I also know many people who are very much younger but who have absolutely no idea of the security issues it brings with it. The number of wireless connections in our street with no security is depressing. I have had very professional looking e-mails from banks and other financial organisations asking for financial details. Pure scams. I have had viruses that did nothing obvious but just sat there collecting data and opening up the system to other attacks. Fortunately I have access to someone who is very computer literate and can sort things for me.

The Internet is a marvellous but also dangerous creature.