Once there was no paper . . .

Once there was no paper.  As a Divinity student at Duke University (circa 1994 - 1997), following the collapse of my undergraduate Brother Word-Processor into several pieces as I was moving into my dorm room as a newly-minted Resident Adviser on Duke's West Campus, I quickly discovered how transitory technology can be.  For one year (1994 - 1995), due to having dropped my Brother Word-Processor on the floor, I struggled using the university dorm computer cluster, well, not actually "struggled" since I always had easy 24/7 access to the computers, located conveniently next to the laundry room, and only 40' or so from my dorm room.

Then, following a generous gift at the conclusion of a year-long ministerial internship, I was able to purchase my very first computer (with the exception of my old Commodore Vic-20 with a whopping 5k!!).  An Apple (of course), complete with Microsoft Word, and these strange devices called "storage disks" were how I understood computer technology for approximately the next decade.

According to Thornburg (2008b), technology can be analyzed by four distinct quadrants, how a new technology enhances a preexisting technological need, how it makes obsolete older technology, how it retrieves the content of an older set of needs, and how it reverses its own characteristics as it sets forth conditions for its own replacement (p. 2).

From such a tetrad a storage device, for example, a thumb-drive, can be described as it conveniently replaced older, bulky storage disks (which had replaced even bulkier "floppy disks"), how such storage devices enhance physical "transport-ability" of files, how it fills a need for such physical transport and how it retrieves even ancient, pre-modern forms of record-keeping. 

Storage Device (Thumb-Drive)

Enhances: Physical "Transport-ability" of Computer Files	Obsoletes: Bulky Computer Storage Disks
Reverses: Computer Files Needing a Physical Storage Device for Transport	Retrieves: Earlier Pre-Modern Forms of Record-Keeping, for example, papyrus and sheep-skin vellum codices, printing press, hard copy books, etc.

Thus, just as papyrus was soon-to-be-replaced by the ingenious novelty of sheep-skin vellum (prior to modern paper), so also have bulky storage disks now been replaced by handy thumb-drives.  However, since each technological advance contains the seeds of its own obsolescence, so also will the equivalent of "paper" eventually arise to replace thumb-drives.  Will thumb-drives simply become antiquated as everyone's cell-phone becomes even more technologically indispensable as files are just sent over the internet directly from phone to desk-top or lap-top?  This technology already exists, and therefore will it become normative? Will texting files to a desk-top or lap-top happen?  Again, this technology already exists, and all that is necessary will be for phones to simply expand their overall memory to store and transport larger files.  Ten years from now, just like the shift from bulky storage disks to thumb-drives we should see new, cheaper, more accessible options becoming normative.

Reference

Thornburg (2008b).  Emerging technologies and McLuhan’s Laws of Media.  Lake Barrington,

IL: Thornburg Center for Space Exploration