Larry Blasko from AP has got a really nice piece in the Washington Post describing one of the best computer backup media ever: paper.
I have worked on computers too long, both physically (A+ certified, donchaknow?) and on the software side to trust anything to the vagaries of technology. I mean, some of the coolest short stories I ever wrote are safe enough, I think, on 5.25″ floppies that fit into a Commodore 1571 disk drive. But that’s no good if I cannot get to them.
Until I am struck blind, though, I can read and retype paper copies. In case you’re wondering how many copies I have of the most important document I have created in the last year (my novel manuscript John Donnelly’s Gold), the answer is ten, and many are stored off site.
