Top Tip: Drive letters ALL messed up!

Writing letters for Dean

letters from a rogue state

20 letters that U.S. soldiers have sent
to Mr. Moore

michaelmoore.com/books-films/dudewheresmycountry/soldierletters /index.php
track this site | 5 links

Letters, Data and Metadata...

Considering how annoying I find The Social Life of Information (again - more on that later), it's surprising how often I feel that I should be posting some of the nuggets contained within it for a larger audience. Anyway, there's a really interesting quote in the book from Paul Duguid's trip report from Portugal which I think is pertinent to my other post (A fragment of a world full of metadata) on the vast amounts of metadata that the real world supplies us with around the edges of the ostensible 'content'. But then again - as I say - I find much of the book so aggravating that I'm not sure quoting a chunk of it to support one of my positions is a particularly inspired idea.

I was working in an archive of a 250-year-old business, reading correspondence from about the time of the American Revolution. Incoming letters were stored in wooden boxes about the size of a standard Styrofoam picnic cooler, each containing a fair portion of dust as old as the letters. As opening a letter triggered a brief asthmatic attack, I wore a scarf tied over my nose and mouth. Despite my bandit's attire, my nose ran, my eyes wept, and I coughed, wheezed and snorted. I longed for a digital system that would hold the information from the letters and leave paper and dust behind.

One afternoon, another historian came to work on a similar box. He read barely a word. Instead, he picked out bundles of letters and, in a move that sent my sinuses into shock, ran each letter beneath his nose and took a deep breath, at times almost inhaling the letter itself but always getting a good dose of dust. Sometimes, after a particularly profound sniff, he would open the letter, glance at it briefly, make a note and move on.

Choking behind my mask, I asked him what he was doing. He was, he told me, a medical historian. (A profession to avoid if you have asthma.) He was documenting outbreaks of cholera. When that disease occurred in a town in the eighteenth century, all letters from that town were disinfected with vinegar to prevent the disease from spreading. By sniffing for the faint traces of vinegar that survived 250 years and noting the date and source of the letters, he was able to chart the progress of the cholera outbreaks.

His research threw new light on the letters I was reading. Now cheery letters telling customers that all was well, business thriving, and the future rosy read a little differently if a whiff of vinegar came off the page. Then the correspondent's cheeriness might be an act to prevent a collapse of businss confidence - unaware that he or she would be betrayed by a scent of vinagar. (Chapter 7 p.173)

Read the comments

SCO Gets More Desperate; Sends More
Letters

Revenue slammed over tax letters

Coming of Age: Is the Internet Friend or
Foe? (2 Letters)

French firms rampage through
Reg letters bag

"a bunch of open letters to the US
President. "

Mood of the Newsroom: Letters from Three
Journalists

Postman Kept 21,000 Letters Undelivered
(Reuters)

30,000 anti-Induce Act letters sent to
Congress

Christmas Letters to Christopher Walken

Qwest and Verizon in a Duel of Letters,
Trying to Buy MCI

Get Information on the Mapped Drive
Letters

The Bush-Lay Letters - July 8, 2004

thesmokinggun.com/archive/0708042lay1.html
track this site | 5 links

Letters to the Editor