The Exhibit

The Crash

          It is the year 2548, and the world is a very different place now. Computers used to be as commonplace as the TV. Laptops were everywhere. In fact they had long ago taken the place of paper and pen. They were used in industry, in education, in the home, everywhere. No longer was there such a thing as paper. No longer were there pencils to sharpen. In, fact the pen too had long since disappeared from everyday life.
          Years ago one had been found when the old Bank America building had been demolished. It was considered so valuable, that an armed guard always watched over it. Crowds at first lined up for blocks to see this marvel of the past. Years later, a steady stream of visitors from around the globe still came to look at the PEN. To think this was how the world of yesterday wrote was something that astonished all who saw it. Many wondered at the truth of it at all, considering it at best a fairy tale.
          However, what really fascinated the serious collector was the search for what at one time was called a book. There simply were no books to be found, for just after the year 2448, all books had been banned and destroyed. The powers being reasoned that if we as a global world were to survive, there must be unity, and computers could bring this unity quicker and more efficiently. Therefore, books were considered too old fashioned, an obstacle to the future. The governments, in their unbridled quest for united world technology, threw out what was considered too old. It was too late when they finally listened to those who tried to stop them. Indeed, so great was their zeal that no books were left on earth. In addition, the trees that at one time were used to produce paper were now considered too precious in light of the planet's dwindling resources. Thus when others were caught trying to print books, they were punished and their presses and inks confiscated. Sadly, with the passage of time, bookmaking became a forgotten art, and books themselves were only vaguely remembered by a generation that was fast growing old. Soon no one alive would know that such a thing ever existed. Like the papyrus scrolls of ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone, and even the hieroglyphics of lost civilizations, they were seen as part of the ancient past.
          That was the case until the great earthquake of 2509. Then the city of Charlotte was left without power for two weeks. When the power resumed, an unknown computer virus spread throughout the world by the same computer lines that brought information over the Internet and into the homes of the citizenry. The silent crash of the global computer system brought the world to its knees, and the age of the computer was over.           
          This is the world today. Books are gone; paper does not exist, and we struggle ourselves even to exist. Still a few of us are trying to record our history, to let others know of our mistake so that somehow we can warn future generations. I am one of these. I write with the point of stick on a stretched canvas, the dried skin of an animal we have consumed for food. Even as I do so, I cry at the terrible loss, and wonder if this will survive. Yet, somehow I know it will, and someday generations in the future will look at it and think how primitive we were. If they only knew!

          Thousands of years later, newspaper headlines around the planet carried word of an important new discovery. Archeologists working in the area near the ocean were astonished at what was unearthed after a recent hurricane What they found was evidence that showed signs of what was thought to have been primitive man's first attempt at writing.
          That evening viewers watched as their televisions told of this amazing discovery. The news channel then went to tell how besides the primitive writing discovered, there was evidence of what appeared to be an ancient burial mound A captivated audience watched as the archaeologists uncovered the mound with plans to remove and rebury the bodies elsewhere. They were shocked when it was not bodies that were found but what appeared to be some type of electronic machinery.

          Of course, this is impossible, as we all know, since the technology for electronics is only a recent development. Such an understanding of electronics would be well beyond the knowledge of primitive man, with evidence strongly showing the primitive man was too busy just staying alive. This reporter believes that claims that insist otherwise are merely hoaxes and not worth the attention that is being paid them. Instead we should get back to reporting the real newsworthy item of the day-the invention of what is to be called the computer-a device that promises to revolutionize the world. Certainly, such technology was beyond the grasp of primitive man.

          Or was it?