Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Saving ...

As noted a couple of days ago, my laptop is misbehaving. As a result, I've spent a lot of time -- writing time -- backing up files in case this is a sickness unto death.
Backing up files reminds me of one of the Platonic dialogues about writing. I don't recall which dialogue -- Phaedrus perhaps -- but the conversation concerns the notion that writing is a secondary and thus lesser form of communication than speech.
Backing up files would come way down the road, then, and the entire internet would as well.
There was a time, not that long ago, when I would happily have gone on at length on this stuff, but I've forgotten most of it and I guess I didn't save the files. Ah well.
Back to backing up.

2 comments:

Ginny Neil, The Singing Farmwife said...

Thanks for making me think and laugh at the same time.

Anonymous said...

Actually, you did not lose the files---even Plato would allow that conversation, engagement with the other[s]also functions as an uncanny mnenomic. In tech terms, all we *say* to each other functions as offline backup. This is close to the distinction Levinas insists upon between the Saying and the Said whereby the Saying resonates, and resonates and therefore does not even require to be backed up in the inscription of the Said. In fact it resists it.

I'll be interested in reading your gloss on May4.

May the 4th be with you,

LW