|
 Littera
scripta manet: the permanence of writing, celebrated by writers from
the time of Horace through the early modern period, can be warranted either
by the durability of a particular inscription, or by the general replicability
of all inscriptions. In either case it also requires the survival of a competent
interpretive community. Furthermore, such permanence requires security against
alteration. In a suggestive passage in his authoritative Commentaries
on the Laws of England (1765-69), William Blackstone privileged paper
or parchment over any other substrate (such as wood or stone) because either
paper or parchment offered a satisfactory combination of durability and
security, qualities in tension with each other.
Given
the fact that, by statute, in certain circumstances a written conveyance
or deed would trump any oral evidence, Blackstone had to address the question
of what physical form such a document should take (aside from the question
of procedural form, such as the necessity for appropriate tax-revenue stamps)
in order to count as a valid deed. It is as if Blackstone were addressing
the question, What counts, formally, as littera scripta? His answer,
informed by a critical reading of seventeenth-century treatises, has implications
for twenty-first-century understandings of littera scripta in the
age of electronic text.
Blackstone
posited an antithesis between textual durability and textual security. Both
are desirable features of the written word, but they are at odds: one comes
at the expense of the other; and the ideal medium for writing will maximize
both. The ideal medium would be a compromise: a substrate sufficiently fragile
to betray tampering readily, yet sufficiently durable to secure the permanence
of the text. Paper and parchment were two such media; and so, according
to Blackstone, the law required that deeds be written on paper or parchment,
and not some other substrate.
Like printing, but to a greater extent, electronic media substitute replicability
for the durability of any substrate: typically the electronic word survives
not by binding to a physical medium but by being readily and precisely copied.
Therefore security cannot depend on the choice of substrate: it must be
achieved homogeneously in the electronic code itself.
Texts written in analog media are naturally auto-historical: that is, whatever
their referent they carry more or less legible traces of the history of
their being inscribed, a history which can be understood in relation to
the history of other events. In that respect such texts are like stone itself,
which has its place in the geologic record. But texts written in digital
bits are characteristically ahistorical: unless artificially date-stamped,
they lack any fixed relation to any historical moment; they are like water.
In Benjamin's terms, they renounce the "aura" of historical authenticity
in favor of an easy access afforded by perfect, fungible reproduction. Electronic
text is naturally synchronic; and only the artifice of experts can authenticate
it by binding it to the history of passing moments, through such devices
as digital time-stamping based upon hashing the code.
Unlike the evidence afforded by the paper or parchment underlying an inscription,
such evidence of the security of the text is not available to direct experience;
it becomes a construct of expert testimony. In the electronic age the permanence
of writing comes to depend upon experts other than the writer or the reader,
custodians of the text comparable to the hieratic scribes of ancient Egypt
or the secretaries of early modern diplomacy. The permanence of electronic
writing is not at all open to inspection but becomes a secret. |
