by Sandy Hubbard
When I was a kid, I favored television shows about spies.
I loved “Mission Impossible” and “It Takes A Thief.” Central to many of the missions were documents that had to be placed or retrieved. In one memorable “It Takes Thief” episode, microfilm of the incriminating documents was concealed within a beauty mark. The term “microdot” churned through the schoolyard, as we debated whether that much information could fit on the head of a pin.
Throughout my blissful years of childhood television viewing, the message was clear: the medium was as important as the message. If you wanted to prove someone was guilty (or to frame someone), you needed the documents themselves, not just the content within the document.
These days, you’d think that documents wouldn’t have the same clout they did. Content is everywhere, accessible 24/7. Print, it could be said, is merely the vehicle for the message.
And yet…
A few days ago, the aide to a presidential historian admitted he had engineered plans to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars of historical documents. And he succeeded. The methods he and his partner used rivaled the TV shows of my youth. They identified museums and cultural societies where they could get access, avoided items that were archived on microfilm, created a distraction, and slipped their prizes into large hidden pockets. After the robberies, they would inventory their items and the market values, and then they would remove identifying marks, cards and containers that might allow documents to be tracked.
When authorities began closing in, the criminals, when faced with capture, shredded some documents and attempted to flush them down the toilet.
Destroy the document, destroy the evidence.
Can you imagine how many thousands of dollars worth of history was shredded? And who knows how many historical documents have been irrevocably lost. Will important documents that were previously viewable by the public now be locked up and inaccessible? Will those items that were sold on the black market be forever lost to public examination?
As we continue to rely on digital archiving for our important historical records, I wonder what will happen to the value of paper and printed documents. Will we, in the future, be ready to risk it all for print?
Story summary http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/27/justice/dc-historian-scam/
Detailed story http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/ab5075979cc5482c989914d933a13ff4/US–Presidential-Artifacts-Theft/
Flashback: “It Take a Thief” television show starring Robert Wagner as Al Mundy http://www.fiftiesweb.com/tv/it-takes-thief.htm
Sandy Hubbard is Print Futurist for PrintMediaCentr.
