Re: [ARSCLIST] Registry of Digital Masters

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl Miller" <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, steven c wrote:
>
> > First...consider that it is possible, at this point, to make a digital
> > copy of ANYTHING (excepting a solid object...)!
>
> Well...just to play devil's advocate...I marvelled at a guy here on campus
> who scanned a dinosaur egg, had a computer driven modeling device make a
> copy of the skeleton inside and then digitally put the bones together and
> then made a model from that digital image...
>
Thus, you can create replicas of solid objects simply by combining a large
number of two-dimensional images...which seems logical! There also exists
the possibility of digital-format holograms...which would take that one
step further...

However, what I was thinking was more along these lines...

We know that "sound" represents the disturbance of the atmosphere in
an area around an event or series thereof. We can record (in the actual
sense of that word) the characteristics of those changes, and use that
data to recreate the changes with a reasonable degree of accuracy...
thus allowing those who were not present at the event to experience
the "sound" it created.

We know that an image represents the changes in the light waves (in the
sense that they existed in a different format at any prior time) which
have been recorded through any number of methods...from a human being
drawing from memory, to a digital camera. A moving image can be recorded
and reproduced by means of a series of recorded still images.

We can think of a solid object as a "disturbance" in the same sense that
we can consider an image as such (see above)...in a fabric of atomic
particles which constantly changes. If you mapped the molecules in a
given space (no mean task!) that map would change significantly if
a solid object were introduced into the mapped space!

Therefore, since we can record changes in air pressure (aka sound)
and changes in light characteristics (aka image)...what if we could
record the changes in that molecular/atomic/particulate map? We would
need to store data on a near-infinite number of whatever we chose to
map, of course...but over three decades we have gone from 10MB hard
drives to 500GB (a factor of 50,000!). And the increase seems to be
exponential...NOT linear! So...

> > but probably not HUMANLY possible!" To begin with, we would need
> > to separate (figurative) "wheat" from "chaff"...and that can actually
> > only be done in hindsight!
>
See "Barr's Seventh Law of Information...)

> Or with some good guessing based upon a strong subject expertise...and
> strong subject expertise is a notion not valued in libraries these days.
>
As long as the library "industry" maintains its evident current attitudes,
ot would appear to have the same relevance that alchemists had after the
discovery and definition of chemistry! I could always say, "Well, I have
dBASE III+ and a 80286 computer that still seems to be able to keep track
of my phonorecord archive...why change things?!"

> > And who is going to catalog the archive...
>
> I would wager that our production of "valuable" information easily exceeds
> (I would guess at least to the power of 100) our ability (especially using
> our out dated modalities like OCLC---I really do like pointing out how
central
> that mindset is a detriment to society) to catalog it.
>
Nevertheless, information which has not been enumerated and catalogued is
for all practical purposes worthless. Imagine a dictionary in which the
words were listed in random order! As far as the reliance on past
modalities,
see above...we could always use the original Anglo-Saxon alphabet on the
grounds that newer character sets were still unproven...or use a group of
scribes with quill pens and parchment on the grounds that typewritten
documents were "hard to read"...
> Karl
>
Steven C. Barr