Re: [-empyre-] Who decides and what to preserve

["Sharmin Choudhury" <sharminc@dstc.edu.au>]

Wow, that question did trigger some interesting discussion. Thank you Paul
for you very informative discussion from the NLA's point of view. I am glad
that you guys have to make the decision on what to preserver and not me. I
think I couldn't go to sleep at night if I did.

As for the philosophical question of 'why preserve anything' well there is
the old saying those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But more
than that I think our past gives us a sense of identity, defines the present
we are in now whether good or bad and in this regard boring old royal
commissions, technical documents, scientific working
papers, refereed e-journals, government publications have as much a role to
play as interesting things like multimedia artworks, prize winning books
etc.

Also referring to the points raised by Simon, I would just like to say that
while I can see the value of pluralism, I can also see the down side of it.
Pluralism can often be like a Chinese whispers where a story through
repetition can loss it's central meaning or have some part of it being left
out which might just be the most important part. I would use blogging as an
example of pluralism. As an avid blogger I record and report a lot of things
in my blog, as do my friends and but how we report it is vastly different
and is coloured by our opinions and prospective, now the question is now
many of the blogs would you have to read to get a complete picture? Is it
even possible to get a complete picture without going back to the source if
the source still exists? I am not sure if this is making much sense, I hope
it is. Anyway I will end this by directing you to EPIC 2014, an interesting
presentation of the future as it might be.

http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

Sharmin Tinni Choudhury
Research Engineer
DSTC PTY LTD