Looking back in that rear-view mirror McLuhan introduces I wonder what the people of the next century might think when they are digging through the archives we have left for them. Will they be just as surprised and amazed like we are when we go to museums to check out ancient stone tablets, the first books printed in history or letters famous writers wrote to their friends and colleagues? What is it we find so interesting about them. There is this aesthetic and mystical value, but why is that?

One fascinating point when looking at the products of our forefathers is the craftsmanship and time they have put in their work. We admire it because we see the effort and skill in their crafts, but what we actually do I say is measuring that effort and skill to the standards and conveniences of today. It might have been a whole lot of work for a monk to copy a biblehand written, not to think of him making a mistake and having to start all over again. But what would he have thought seeing the some old stone tablets with text carved into it?

Today we copy-paste everything and we can’t imagine typing over a whole page of text. Even if we want to edit it later and don’t have a digital version we look for a program that recognizes shapes while scanning and translates that shapes into editable text data. Meanwhile I sometimes have to do a HTML edit when a spotter copy-pasted its post from word. And nowthere is this PDF standard that should make everything readable where ever and how ever it was produced. Standardisation is key if you want the world to understand you right.

But if I want my .docx text to be readable for everyone I have to export it as PDF. The same goes for graphic designs, photos, presentations and so on. It is all exported to PDF. I wonder how our grand-grand-children will look at that: our craftmanship of copy-paste, exporting and all like wise actions. Will they use one application in which they can do everything, or will all different applications they have use one standard code in which it creates and communicates. Will the domain specific architecture that Grady Booch talks about be just the different interfaces of that one network or unified language? What will be the craftmanship and patience we will be admired for?