Taken from Chairman’s Comments in the latest issue of SAHB Times:
In the latest issue of Automotive History Review attention is drawn to the fact that next year the SAH will be celebrating its 40th anniversary. To mark the occasion a symposium is planned on ‘The Future of Automotive History’.
Historians practice their calling by looking back in time, discovering and collating facts from days gone by, and then presenting them in a coherent manner to inform others about the past. However, when it comes to looking forward in time and predicting the future, this is best left to astrologers, clairvoyants, and others of their ilk who know that they are right and suffer no embarrassment when events unfold contrary to their prognostications.
While motoring continues there will be history to record about it, but what form that record will take is a matter of conjecture. No doubt most motoring historians came to the subject via books and magazines. As these words are written they are viewed not on a sheet of paper scrolling from a typewriter but on a monitor screen, and those with a computer could easily have had these musings transmitted directly to them.
The technology exists whereby the words could have been spoken into a computer and then read on a screen, and since electronic books and magazines are now available, perhaps these means of recording and viewing will be the norm quite soon. In much the same way that the auto-mobile-personal-transport vehicle went from a horseless carriage to a recognisable motorcar in the short period between 1895 and 1905, the current pace of change of media technology, whilst stimulating, as with all rapid change presents difficulties in keeping abreast of it. Predicting whence it goes next is impossible.
For today’s final thought on media technology, readers may care to ponder the following: “In 1986 the BBC spent two and a half million pounds creating a computer-based, multi-media version of the Domesday Book… stored on twelve-inch laser discs that could only be deciphered by a special micro-computer. Sixteen years later an attempt was made to read the information using one of the few [suitable] computers still in existence. The attempt failed. … By contrast, the original Domesday Book, almost 1000 years old, written in ink on paper… is in fine condition and still perfectly readable.”* The old adage about putting all one’s eggs into a single basket comes to mind …
Malcolm Jeal
* From: The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel, Yale University Press, 2008, pp75/6
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