September 28, 2003
Cory Doctorow and Fahrenheit 451

In an interview Cory Doctorow has made some remarks about the fragility of paper, and how that makes knowledge on paper ephemeral:

I mean, books are printed on substrate that is so fragile that it burns when it comes into contact with oxygen. We actually use that substrate to wipe our asses with. This is not robust, archival material. This is the very definition of ephemeral, that literature is a book written on toilet paper.

Burn when in contact with oxygen? Doctorow should really know that given sufficient encouragement most things will burn when in contact with oxygen...

Posted by Claus at September 28, 2003 09:30 PM | TrackBack (0)
Comments (post your own)

What makes you think I don't?

Posted by: Cory Doctorow on September 29, 2003 3:06 AM

The point is that everything is fragile. Everything is under attack. As it turns out, even the ideas are fragile.
In fact, I find, when thinking a little more about it, that the paper tends to outlive the ideas printed on it...

Posted by: Dee on September 29, 2003 10:22 AM
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