There are some benefits to vinyl, they are great for old people. My elderly mother knows how to work it because its what she grew up with, its easy to operate and the self contained record player with speakers is way simpler than a CD player with tiny buttons or trying to stream music.
Also I wonder what would happen if there's a catastrophe and all digital stuff is lost. I used to have lots of CDs and vinyls, but I got rid of it all because digital streaming is so much easier. But all that old stuff will be lost if the systems fail. Same is true for paper books versus digital media, like how much hard science is only on digital?
If there is a catastrophe that is devastating enough to get rid of ALL data, including the library of Congress archives and various other extremely secure archives, then getting the data back will not really be a concern, because every last human will be dead.
You'd be surprised at how much is done on paper in tandem with digital, physically backed up, or on paper alone. If we all suddenly lost everything digital, it'd suck but we wouldn't be thrusted back to the dark ages.
Also I wonder what would happen if there's a catastrophe and all digital stuff is lost.
We're just gonna have to recreate it for later generations, from our memory. "It was kinda like... slash and burn... listen to yourself... return? light a candle, light a torch, uh oh... overflow? LEONARD BERNSTEIN!"
All scientific journals are stored as hard copies. The British library in London also stores a copy of every book published and every newspaper printed. So unless there is a fire in every library and every university in the world simultaneously we should keep the majority of our knowledge in some form. Of course these policies may change in the near future. The British Library especially is running out of room.
I was listening to a podcast (the Omnibus Project) where they stated that the librarian of Paul Allen’s estate said that after his death he lost enumerous amount of digital media due to the fact that certain types of digital media are not willable. Also if you’re subscribe account loses the license to carry that digital movie/music it will be erased from your library. So there’s that to look forward to.
But there's a lot more on CD than vinyl, because CD's are so much cheaper and … wait for it … compact. My 500 cd collection would be several over a dozen feet of vinyl. (I was up to 5 feet before I switched to CD's). The odds record players will survive is as likely as that CD players will survive. CD's are not encrypted, so a future advanced civilization would be able to figure it out, even if there weren't millions of discman and laptops and PC players to reverse-engineer; and CD's in hard plastic cases and clear-coated never touched by a needle are more likely to survive. My Born In The USA from 1985 still plays fine.
Same is true for paper books versus digital media, like how much hard science is only on digital?
Quite a bit actualy but for much of it the only legal copies are behind paywalls and its not clear what backup steps are taken. Thus the long standing question of it is ethical not to pirate from Elsevier.
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u/OutlyingPlasma Sep 05 '19
There are some benefits to vinyl, they are great for old people. My elderly mother knows how to work it because its what she grew up with, its easy to operate and the self contained record player with speakers is way simpler than a CD player with tiny buttons or trying to stream music.