early christian writings

[kiwimac]

Great site which I had found before and which I had (to my shame) forgotten about. Can I also mention the following site.

Internet Sacred Text Archive Home

[Dream]

Makes sense, and I should have guessed that... scribes were few and paper doesn't last forever. Things have to be copied over and over again to last centuries... Thanks for the history lesson!

We are the founding scribes of all future electronically stored knowledge. In our lifetimes information is going from temporary mediums like paper to mediums of relatively infinite cheapness, portability, and permanence: things like static memory, holographs, and molecular quanta. 100 years from now, everything our generation writes and believes may be the filter through which *all* future generations judge the cumulative knowledge that was once kept on paper. If its not on Gutenberg.org, they may wonder if it ever really existed. They will argue, "What did Thomas and Dah-veeth think? Did they ever quote from that? Well, then it was probably not a real document." Paper documents and signatures will likely be chosen for their ease of recycling -- not their permanence. Prepare for post-mortem fame, friends.

[arthra]

It may be overly optimistic as a few glitches and maybe a big solar flare will erase a lot of that memory... Consider that what still may be left will be what was carved on stone or on clay tablets in mesopotamia which have still survived...

Baha'is have some records of our Writings that are preserved in various places on microfiche in case there is some untoward disaster to the original docs... but hopefully there will be enough preserved in vacuum and archival science for future generations.

- Art