Manual Address Book

Part of the series (S)Low Tech vs. High Tech

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In today's digital world we all – well not all of us really but a great many of us – rely and depend on our contacts list via computers or cell phones, whether stored on the device or online, and often this address book is only backed up digitally as well, if at all.

Consider, however, for a moment, the loss of your cell phone, a crash of your computer or its hard drive, or loss of access, for whatever reason, to your digital address book. If those contact details, those named and addresses, etc., are not “backed up”, other than digitally, it could mean that you lose them.

Many people seemingly have come to believe that digital, and thus paperless, is superior, but is that really so?

When technology fails, and it is bound to do at some stage, it is then that Low Tech shows its superiority. A paper-based address book of sorts should always be in existence for if and when technology throws a fit.

Sure, my address book is also on the PC, as far as email addresses are concerned but I also maintain a manual back up in the form of paper-based records.

The good old-fashioned Filofax kind of address book and the humble index cards in a box (you can even make your own cards; I do) all still are the most reliable form of maintaining contact records, as the the address book with the tabbed alphabetical index that you can buy most places, often for little money.

Many people nowadays believe that paper records of all kinds, including manual address book and such, are outdated and the purveyors of digital products and services most definitely want us to believe that.

However, in many instances (S)Low Tech will beat High Tech and it is always good to have and maintain paper records and drafts of articles on paper too. Says he who has, for the second time, when transferring a document from one hard drive to another, lost 80% of an article. How? Beats me!

Proof, however, that it is good to have back up and duplicates and also and especially paper records.

© 2012

Of Runners and Carrier Pigeons

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Few people today are aware of the importance – vital importance, in fact – of carrier pigeons to winning the war against the Nazis.

All too often the thought is that it was modern technology that made winning the war possible, such as radar, radio and Bletchley Park to name but a few, but low tech was very important, from runners, couriers, and observers to the humble homing pigeon or carrier pigeon (and no, they were not based on aircraft carriers).

Even in today's high tech world – and the way my computer has been and is playing up the more I am convinced of this – those means of communication can be more reliable than anything else, as can be dead letter drops. Just drop it in there; don't have to murder it first.

Just before the D-Day Landings especially, when almost total radio silence had been ordered so as not to have the Germans get wind of the preparations, a vast number of carrier pigeons was used, many of which carried messages from SOE agents and the Resistance in France.

Such humble means of communications are also something that we should keep in mind for the event that other communications, upon which we have come to rely so much in the last decades, break down or are, for whatever reason, down, including government shutdown of them, such as was the case with cell phone networks immediately after the 7/7 bombings in London.

Letters, especially written by hand, are something that are quite alien to many of the younger generation today and some hardly know, nowadays, how to properly address a letter and an envelope, and let us not even talk of putting together a letter. Years ago that was something that every child was taught, either at home or at school, as it was a vital life skill.

The military and government in general today also has little knowledge of methods and means of communication other than by electronic means from radio to packet switching and others and all of those are prone to interference, interception, hacking, etc. This is not to say that a letter, whether by mail or courier, a carrier pigeon or a runner, cannot be intercepted.

Our reliance, dubious reliance, on those high tech methods to the detrimental loss of knowing how to use and employ those older low tech ones can spell disaster one day and we would all do well to have contingency plans in place where manual communications can take over from the high tech ones.

Pen and paper are not dead and never will die of death for communications and for the noting down of things regardless of the fact that some people think so. And old-fashioned means may, in fact, save the day some day in the same way as carrier pigeons did it for World War Two.

© 2012