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Thinking about writing and the consequence of everything going digital.
I was listening to someone talk about J.R.R. Tolkien, and about how some of his stories were published after his death. And it made me realize that actually a lot of great writers have had work published after they passed on. And it occured to me that in our modern times, it's very unlikely that this would happen.
For a lot of artists, everything they do is done in the digital world. Every word they write, everything they say. Including most authors today. And if anything were to happen to those writers, all of their unpublished work would probably just be lost. Either trapped in digital hell till a cloud storage provider decides to delete it, or on some older computer left to rot.
I wonder how many books were never published, because the writer died and their work was all online? How many great novels are stuck on the drive of some long broken computer, slowly disintegrating, tossed out as so much e-waste?
The days of the posthumous author, may die with the typewriters they used to write their works. Computers and the internet are fantastic tools for sure, but maybe working on paper, something more permanent, still has a place. I know for me it always will. But maybe for the sake of the future it should as well.
For a lot of artists, everything they do is done in the digital world. Every word they write, everything they say. Including most authors today. And if anything were to happen to those writers, all of their unpublished work would probably just be lost. Either trapped in digital hell till a cloud storage provider decides to delete it, or on some older computer left to rot.
I wonder how many books were never published, because the writer died and their work was all online? How many great novels are stuck on the drive of some long broken computer, slowly disintegrating, tossed out as so much e-waste?
The days of the posthumous author, may die with the typewriters they used to write their works. Computers and the internet are fantastic tools for sure, but maybe working on paper, something more permanent, still has a place. I know for me it always will. But maybe for the sake of the future it should as well.