Technological downfall

[JM]

By electromagnetic pulse or accidental apocalypse, the idea of technology collapsing beneath our feet. In some ways the idea appeals to me, or at least to the anarchic part of my soul.
But when my hard drive dies and forces me to lose huge chunks of data, part of which was some of my writing which I am very peeved about, I think that wiping out the human race for the sake of appeasing the tetchy computer gods sounds like a good idea.

It's that strange part of human existance that while only a small fraction of the population can afford these horrid machines, and is guite excited to buy the newest models when they do die on us we scream, shout, slit our wrists and plot genocide on a grand scale. Those who can't afford them seem to manage perfectly well, although most of those who can't are starving to death in third world countries (remember, most of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day).

Unfortuantly it's illegal to become a hermit in this country. Whenever this sort of computer crash happens to me I just want to strip down and live in a cave somewhere, flashing my privates at japanese tourists and throwing rocks at passing helecoptors.

[Chirugal]

Oh, no, IM, that's awful! How much writing did you lose? I'd be so upset if that happened to me. *grabs memory stick and starts backing up files*

[JM]

Mostly just a lot of edits I had done to it, changing the point of view and stuff like that. Luckly I managed to get a backup of most of it from a friend (who is someone I've based a character on), she had pretty much the entire thing apart from the edits.

Now I backup on several computers at a time, plus hard copies.
So I learned a lesson and didn't lose too much.

[marianne]

Hi IM
I always send copies to family or friends in case the house burns down!
M


sorry - posted in the wrong thread again!

[Chirugal]

I deleted the post from the wrong thread, Marianne - how do you end up doing that? XD

Good to hear, IM. At least you won't forget to back up in the future!

[Ros]

I'm really old-fashioned, in that I back up nearly everything I write to hard copy as well as in electronic format. You just don't know what will go wrong, but I think you can expect all computers to die eventually, as well as the storage medium. CD Roms are actually very short-lived, I think the coating on them tends to disintegrate after a few years. At least, that's what it looked like to me when I was going through a stack of old ones recently, and I found that most of the ones I had that were more than 5 years old had some kind of errors on them.

It's a bit depressing when you consider that most of the information we keep won't be with us in just a few years time, unless someone makes a conscious effort to back it all up and maintain it. It's actually quite fragile. The only really enduring medium seems to be stone tablets (a bit impractical for your novel, I guess).