 | Studies in bibliography |  |
III
Despite the easy analogy of electrons and water, and despite anecdotal
lore about obsolescent electronic texts, which die if they happen to survive the
only machines that can read them,[30]
the main problem with electronic text
is not the problem of durability. For there are two different routes to durability:
the durability of the particular inscription, or the replicability of the
inscribed text. Blackstone almost encounters this distinction when he remarks
that "the deed must be written, or I presume printed." Printing, being
a technology that can readily replicate a text, can give it durability of a second
kind, beyond the durability of any particular inscription. After all, the boasts
of Horace, Ovid, and Shakespeare were fulfilled not because their holograph
manuscripts "remained"—they did not—but because they were copied, first
in manuscript and eventually by print, which greatly multiplied the number
of copies and so hedged against the loss of any copy. Important early English
manuscript documents were, as we say now, "backed up"—that is, copied onto
copy-ability. Of course, copies may vary in accuracy, making textual criticism
both possible and necessary. Electronic text makes copying extraordinarily
easy and potentially of much greater accuracy than any manual or print
process. Despite its wimpy, insubstantial appearance, electronic text passes
the first of Blackstone's tests. Even, or perhaps especially, in its electronic
form, littera scripta manet. Replicating like an electronic virus, the stuff is
actually very hard to expunge, as many a bureaucrat or newsgroup participant
has learned with regret.
The main problem with electronic text has to do with the second of
Blackstone's requisites: that is, the security of the letter—its security against
tampering. Not that letters written or printed on paper or parchment cannot
be tampered with or forged: they are not always what they represent themselves
to be. Nonetheless, such forgeries and alterations often show: under
more or less ordinary scrutiny they may be seen for what they are. Albert S.
Osborn (1858-1956), a forensic expert who was celebrated for his skill in the
detection of document tampering, once described the process of detection in
terms that recall Blackstone's reliance for security on the fragility of paper
and parchment, and that also amount to practical advice to l'homme moyen
sensuel, the ordinary person possessed of ordinary senses, and ordinary common
sense:
Alteration and tampering would be made much more difficult if all business forms
that pass from hand to hand should be printed on dry, very smooth and perfectly
white calendered paper, not of the highest quality, with an ample field of pure white
paper surface above and below the amount line.
Calendered paper, like ordinary foolscap, is made smooth by pressure as it runs
between heavy rolls. This operation compresses and smooths the sheet and the slightest
disturbance of the surface of any kind is easily seen. The application of water, or
any fluid, swells the paper and destroys the uniformity of the surface and is easily
discovered.
Abrasion erasures also are very apparent on this paper and it is impossible to
erase even pencil writing from paper of this kind without destroying the sheen or
reflective quality of the paper when the erasure is made. . . . an erasure of this kind is
seen at once by holding the paper so that the surface reflects light to the eye. The
disturbed portion will not reflect the same as undisturbed portions. The banker or
business man should select the paper upon which checks and drafts are to be printed
and not meekly accept whatever paper and design is [sic] offered to him.[32]
Such was the world of writing on paper—a world not free of suspicions,
but a world nonetheless in which you might expect to find your suspicions
confirmed or disconfirmed: simply look and see.[33]
The new world of writing
with electrons prompts a stronger misgiving: the fear that one can never see
for oneself whether the written word that persistently remains (assuming that
it does) is the word it was supposed to be, or is, rather, an invisible imposture.
Several years ago David Bearman, a consultant who had held administrative
positions in the Office of Information Resource Management at The
Smithsonian Institution, prepared a brief introduction to such problems,
titled "Archiving and Authenticity." Published online in 1995 as part of a
symposium, it reappeared, revised, the following year as part of a paper document
issued by the Getty Art History Information Program, a collection of
articles titled Research Agenda for Networked Cultural Heritage. The online
edition was withdrawn in 1999, but the paper edition fortunately survives.
Bearman's comments are at least as pertinent now as they were in 1995:
The proliferation of electronic information and communication systems has created
a crisis of accountability and evidence. As more and more of the records of our society
are available in electronic form, users are asking how they can be sure electronic
records created in the past will be available in the future and how they can be sure
those received today are trustworthy. The issue is critical for all aspects of humanistic
studies because these scholarly disciplines depend on the study of original texts,
images, and multimedia sources. To even imagine the humanities, it is essential to
have correct attribution, certainty of authenticity, and the ability to view sources
many decades or centuries after they are created.[34]
Bearman's logic is consistent with the "Statement on the Significance of
Primary Records," published by the Modern Language Association of America
in 1995, which argues the need to preserve for "future study . . . texts that
appeared in the past in handwritten or printed form on paper or parchment."
Such material embodiments provide essential information about the history
of the text in question, including the history of its consumption as well as of
its production. "If we approach the electronic future with these thoughts in
mind," the report urges, "we will be more rigorous in our demands of new
forms of textual presentation and more vigilant in our protection of the
artifacts embodying the old forms. Both these actions are necessary to ensure
the continuation of productive reading, teaching, and scholarship."[35]
Stephen Manes, "Time and Technology Threaten Digital Archives," New York
Times Apr. 7, 1998, F4. Jeff Rothenberg, "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents,
Scientific American 272 (1995): 24-25.
Albert S. Osborn, Questioned Documents, 2nd ed. (Albany, NY: Boyd, 1929), 543.
Questioned Documents was the leading twentieth-century treatise in the field of forensic
document examination. Despite judicial misgivings that prevailed up to the end of the
nineteenth century, Osborn helped to establish that field as a "science" (displacing the
feebler pretensions of graphology), and he became increasingly influential in the courts as
an expert witness. Skepticism about the field has re-emerged only in recent decades. For an
account of Osborn's rhetorical skills, which made the most of an uncertain enterprise by
catering to judicial needs and stressing ocular demonstration, see Jennifer L. Mnookin,
"Scripting Expertise: The History of Handwriting Identification Evidence and the Judicial
Construction of Reliability," Virginia Law Review 87 (2001): 1723-1845, especially 1757-60,
1814-29.
Kasirer, in "From Written Record to Memory in the Law of Wills," expresses some
impatience with "conventional definitions of writings as visible, touchable entities and of
signatures as inky, human marks," and with the privileging of "[t]he ability to see the will
with the human eye, unassisted by technology" (59, 57). Compare the concerns expressed by
Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., "The Electronic Panopticon: Censorship, Control, and Indoctrination
in a Post-Typographic Culture," Literacy Online: The Promise (and Peril) of Reading
and Writing with Computers, ed. Myron C. Tuman (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1992):
"The ability to alter the past has always been potentially possible in analog culture. It has
tended, however, to be enormously time-consuming and relatively easy to detect. . . . The
alteration of photographic data by digital techniques represents a major problem in terms
of the integrity of historical documents, and the extent to which we can trust the information
from such sources in the future" (174, 179).
David Bearman, "Archiving and Authenticity," Research Agenda for Networked
Cultural Heritage, ed. David Bearman (Santa Monica, CA: Getty, 1996), 63. (Regarding the
online version see 7.) See also Bearman's earlier collection of articles, Electronic Evidence:
Strategies for Managing Records in Contemporary Organizations (Pittsburgh: Archives and
Museums Informatics, 1994); and Peter S. Graham, Intellectual Preservation: Electronic
Preservation of the Third Kind (Washington, DC: Commission on Preservation and Access,
1994). R. J. Robertson, Jr., in "Electronic Commerce on the Internet and the Statute of
Frauds," South Carolina Law Review 49 (1998): 787-846, before recommending statutory
revisions to authorize electronic commerce, summarizes the advantages of material writing
and the disadvantages of immaterial, electronic writing, in terms that support the present
analysis; see especially 795-796.
For a less anxious perspective see Peter L. Shillingsburg, "Polymorphic, Polysemic, Protean,
Reliable, Electronic Texts," Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanities, ed.
George Bornstein and Ralph G. Williams (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1993), 29-43.
Modern Language Association of America, "Statement on the Significance of Primary
Records," Profession 95 (1995): 27, 28. For an account of the preparation of this statement,
see G. Thomas Tanselle, "Introduction" (29-32). For an institutional assessment of
the practical and economic difficulties that face such demands, see Stephen G. Nichols and
Abby Smith, The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library
Collections (Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2001).
| Studies in bibliography | |