Thought Collector: Printing [retyped on March 30, 2015 from a
   printout from March 16, 2002 from an email account that no
   longer exists that was tied into a device no longer supported!*
   If I hadn't printed this out, these would would forever be
   gone.* Prophetic words follow! -Ken] Printing is an amazing
   thing.* By writing in a format that is captured on paper, there
   is a chance to communicate with the future!* Hundreds of years
   may pass by, but your little piece of paper may be your ticket
   to immortality!   Look at Emily Dickenson.* What if all of her
   poetry was captured on paper-tape, used back in the 1970s moreso
   than magnetic media?* 100 years later, it's unlikely that anyone
   would be able to decode it, or would even want to, because it is
   encrypted in a sense.   Or worse, had her poetry been saved to
   diskette, the magnetic media would have deteriorated.* Or in a
   sent-email stored on a server somewhere?* What if the holder of
   that server goes out of business?* There goes your poetry,
   Emily.   But no!* She wrote on every piece of paper she could
   find - even toilet paper.* Because of this - because her
   writings were saved on paper, they were found, and read, and
   saved, and cherished.* She died, but became immortal in a very
   human fashion.   I don't like my work to be lost.* There is
   nothing worse than getting everything "just so", and blam,
   something happens that destroys or distorts your work.
   Certainly, I could learn to take the stance of the Buddhist monk
   sand-painting, spending months drawing a picture with colored
   sand, only to destroy it when finished.* In a sense, that's what
   happens when you write and other people read.* When other people
   read what you wrote, your written thoughts are being scattered
   to the winds - the thoughts are no longer just yours anymore,
   but belong to anyone who reads them.   It's a frightening thing
   - your baby is out there for the world to take, distort, malign,
   or worse: Ignore.* But it's empowering as well - your baby is
   out there for the world to cherish, nurture, love, absorb.   The
   permanence of printing appeals to me the most.* if the batteries
   die on my VTech Postbox companion, everything I wrote here is
   lost.* If the Yahoo server that I send the e-mail to has a
   glitch, it's lost.* Print it out, and technology is less likely
   to destroy it.* Sure, there is fire and water - but if you have
   fire and water destroying your writings, it's more than likely
   that more important things than your writings are at stake!
   That's all I have to say for now on on this subject.