Carrying the Obsolete Box of Knowledge
I might have all the world’s information in my pocket, but I will continue to haul that box of paper everywhere I go
When I was about ten, I acquired the biggest, most comprehensive dictionary I had ever seen. It had a blue cover, and in my memory it’s so massive I could barely lift it. I didn’t know about the Oxford English Dictionary yet, so the text seemed impossibly tiny, representing a major vocabulary upgrade from my bold and babyish children’s dictionary.
The new blue one also, oddly, had entries for chemical formulae. When I’d lie around reading the dictionary (I’m serious), I’d get a little thrill when I came across one of those entries. I knew what H2O was, but hadn’t yet had chemistry instruction at school, so this felt somehow like I was being given glimpses into some greater realm of knowledge. I didn’t understand how or why, but I could tell that C6H12O6 = glucose was part of a fundamental code.
Rather than trying to solve the code, though, I started keeping a list. Despite my horrible lack of follow-through with journaling or other daily record-keeping, I’ve always had compulsions to keep track of information. Soon I was diving into the dictionary specifically to find chemical formulae, and the sheet of notebook paper I kept tucked into the back of the book for this purpose was filling up. I don’t remember exactly why, but I stopped before beginning another page. Maybe I got overwhelmed with the project. Or maybe I realized the world didn’t need me to be Keeper of the Chemical Formulae since they were already recorded there in the dictionary.
That same year, I saw a URL for the first time, printed on a sticker: www.batmanforever.com. Even though my family was a year or so from getting the Internet at home, we had used it. My parents would drive across town to my dad’s office so I could spend my allotted fifteen minutes searching for pictures of John Lennon, which I’d have to individually load on the dial-up connection so I could print them for my scrapbook (yes, I’m still serious).
URLs being a new thing to me, I hadn’t really noticed them during this whole process. When I saw the Batman one, I had to know what this strangely punctuated phrase was. After that, I started seeing URLs everywhere — and I started writing them down. Again, I was stirred by the sense that I’d found keys to an unknown realm of information. I wasn’t particularly interested in actually visiting the actual websites — I just felt like they should be collected.
Now that the Internet is constantly in my hands, the amount of information collected, collated, and available at a tap too vast to comprehend, this behavior seems especially weird. Back then, limited by those Internet special-occasions and the whims of local librarians, information still seemed precious. I would daydream about the perfect set of encyclopedias I’d someday own — condensed knowledge on my shelf.
This has been on my mind lately because we’re moving, and moving always requires as much reduction as it does packing. No matter how pared down your possessions are, when you move there’s always some element of facing the weird things you’ve held onto, even the internal ones.
I’ve been settled down in my current house for a while, but it wasn’t always like this. I moved to New Hampshire right on the heels of several cross-country relocations, all in the span of just a few years. Before that, everything I owned had been stolen or destroyed (including the scrapbook full of John Lennon pictures, RIP). I’ve had my reckonings with stuff, and I’m pretty good at getting rid of things.
I occasionally indulge in a need to own a particular book that twinges that old childhood desire to lock down the information. But I only have one collection: editions of Alice in Wonderland. I don’t own an encyclopedia, and you couldn’t pay me to take yours. I do have a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, but I’ve never had the urge to transcribe any of it.No real traces of bizarre information-hoarding left here.
Except for this one box.
The box sits in my barn, full of notes from my high school history classes. Some of the notes are from classes I didn’t even take. I wanted the full set, so I begged someone else for their “regular” notes to file next to my Honors class versions. I have World History (both versions), AP European History, and Contemporary International Issues, each in its own binder.
Some of the notes are handwritten, some typed on a typewriter. Some are my handwriting, some are the teacher’s. Every class period we’d copy down new pages of information: the people, places, things, and vocabulary words that were going to give us a wide overview of human history. These notes cover everything from Lucy the Australopithecus to Saddam Hussein, and they do it in a tidy, organized march through time and space.
By the time I entered high school, my sense of knowing what I didn’t know had matured. I became too preoccupied with attraction and depression to chase every sense of being on the verge of learning something brand new. Despite my angst, though, these notes managed to break through and touch what remained of that pre-teen sense of wonder. They were the fulfillment of everything I never knew I was trying to accomplish in collecting URLs and chemical formulae — and this one became a fully realized project. Nobody had stopped after one page; we’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of pages full of bite-sized historical morsels.
History ultimately isn’t about lists of dates or names; the most that information by itself can get you is a broad cultural literacy. It’s analysis and argument that make up the discipline. I went on to major in history in college, and did a few years of grad school in modern European history. Cherished textbooks have filled my shelves and departed them, long-hoarded research papers recycled. The only traces of my tertiary education are the degree itself buried in a box and some writing I did for classes buried on old hard drives. The high school notes, on the other hand, yet fill an entire box in the barn, the closest thing I really have to the “condensed knowledge” I yearned for in the form of an Encyclopedia Brittanica.
A few years ago, I looked at the notes and found myself annoyed by their obvious biases, disappointed by their shallowness. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I’ve lectured rooms full of twenty-somethings about what history is and is not; these notes are trivia, not history. Not one time in all my years attending various universities did I turn to those notes. Nowadays, there’s nothing I could find in those pages that I can’t find in seconds on my phone — with more nuance, images, countering viewpoints, and links to further study.
With a portal to entire worlds in my hand, these notes have become completely useless. But even as I’m acknowledging the complete irrationality, I’m going to keep them. They’ll stay boxed up and come to rest in my new office, where they might sit quietly for another twenty years.
There is, of course, a sentimental aspect to why we keep the things we keep. It doesn’t need to bend to rationality. But I would be lying if I failed to acknowledge a hint of my strange ten-year-old self peeking around the corner here. She’s impressed by the universe-portal I carry in my purse, but she’s still a little giddy and filled with wonder thinking about that box that contains the keys to the history of the world.