We know that at some point the sun will go supernova and destroy the Earth. Our planet and everything on it is not permanent, and will be completely vaporized some day. Whenever I’m reminded of this, my next thought is what about Shakespeare?
Gone. I have the complete works in little blue hardcover books. That will be gone. Every version, hard copy and digital, will be gone.
One thought is how to preserve these works and other great works. Shakespeare is not my favorite, but I do like him, and regardless of where he sits on my personal list, his work should be saved. Now that I’m sitting here writing this I assume we could just send a digital file of all of the works of humanity into space and let that be the end of that.
But the second point, and the more important point, is that these works have value here and now.
On a related tangent, I remember the day my 84 year old father had just come home from knee surgery. I wondered if he he given up on humanity yet? At what point in a person’s life is it appropriate to stop caring about the fate of his fellow man? As we sat there around his bed, my step mother told us a story that a college professor friend of hers had a class where not only had none of the students read Shakespeare, they’d never even heard of him. College students. It was at that point I personally gave up on humanity. But my belief in human achievement remains strong, maybe stronger.
Humanity has done many great things. I think they are worth preserving beyond the existence of earth.
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