Nerdy Classics Majors

[Barry Hofstetter]

For those who can't get enough, there is a Facebook group called "Nerdy Classics Majors." Feel free to visit, join and contribute. Not at the expense of Textkit, though.

[Timothée]

I have never been in Facebook, and never shall. Twitter is better, but I’ve grown tired of it, as it has far too many exasperating side effects. Better to stay here.

[Cathexis]

Can you imagine how poorer our Ancient Heritage would be if Caesar could've
tweeted his Gallico Bello pre-, intra-, and post- battles? He would've loved twitter!
Instead of keeping 2 scribes going simultaneously, Great Caesar would've had multi-
twitter feeds going all over the place. But what a loss for Western Civ.

Cicero on the other hand, would've relished FB, I'd say. I can just imagine him dressing
his litterae up with embedded .gifs and his Timeline would've been chock full of daily
Grumpy Cat and other memes.

But Cato! I can just see him hunched over his landline waiting for it to ring ("Why hasn't
Crassus called me back yet? Ye gods and little fishes!"). Just licking his stamps for the
snail mail and grumpy about the mailman never being punctual as he ought to be.

I thank the Gods of Olympus that these men never had any of this in their lives; Our
Heritage would be so much the poorer if they had.

FWIW,

Cathexis/Andrew

[npc]

I wish the ancient writers had access to digital media back in the day. While some of the documents we have now may not have been up to the standards we have come to expect, just think how many more we could access if ancient civilizations had adequate backups. Imagine if folks were standing outside the burning Library of Alexandria saying, "Good thing we have a copy of everything in the cloud."

[jeidsath]

I hope that is tongue in cheek. Digital storage depends on a functioning civilization being around. The fabs that produce the chips in your PCs are insanely resource-dependent. Any sort of 50- or 100- year gap in first-world civilization would destroy a great deal of information, especially as the new civilization scavenges materials from the earlier.

A good codex, on the other hand, can last hundreds of years as long as it's kept out of the damp.