Paper: no future without history

Paper is one of the greatest inventions ever, next to the great classics such as radio, phone, car, aeronautics or electricity. From the beginning of its existence, paper has been the ideal carrier for the distribution of knowledge and of news and especially the saving of these. How would the world look like if we did not dispose of such a compact way to save the thoughts of human kind into books, papers and such? On which carrier would Columbus have kept track of his discoveries, on which carrier would he have mapped the world? How would our great inventors have noted down their inventions, how would they have been able to compare their very first attempts with one another? How would the Bible have been distributed so extensively throughout the world, or the Koran? In our modern internet-society with numerous telecommunication means, paper is long not written-off from our daily life. Paper can carry the greatest nonsense. But paper has also made sure that masterpieces from Mozart or Chopin have survived time and ephemerality. How would we have ever “virtually met” our favourite ancestors? If we have to convince people on the great virtues of paper, we have to raise one question: how would the world look like without paper? Simple: without literature, news papers, publicity. Or in one word: without HISTORY. And without history, the future can never be the same...

Submitted by: Dominique De Cremer