What is Past is Prologue

July 25, 2007

Throughout history, our concept of a “document” has been everything from cuneiform writing on clay tablets to quill etchings on parchment to the multi-font typing of an IBM Selectric typewriter. Even today, at the dawn of the 21^st century, the popular concept of a document is still something you create in a word processor and then print out on the nearest laser printer and store neatly away. My college years, which weren’t so long ago, consisted of writing a lot of research papers on a clunky laptop, printing them out to submit to my professors and getting back a marked up bunch of pages with a grade on the front page.

I doubt that I am unique in having a mother who somewhere in her house has a box of school projects my sister and I made that she wants to save forever. I also doubt I am unique in having a CD or data key somewhere in my house that is an archive of the best stuff I’ve written, both college and beyond, which I want to save forever. And I am absolutely positive that someday I will also want to have a contemporary archive of projects that my own children will make, and that I will also want to save forever.

This is the true promise of Open XML. Documents today are about opening up a multi-dimensional universe of capability with regards to how data is presented. But this shouldn’t come at the cost of preserving fidelity to the past. I want to know that the document format I am using today is going to give me the greatest advantage in terms of productivity and capability, as well as painless access to cherished documents while not sacrificing the potential for new ideas and functionality.

Now, this of course would not apply to construction paper turkeys made from the outline of a child’s hand, but it would be perfectly suited for the presentations that students as well as business people create. And while it wouldn’t make preservation of shoebox dioramas made from Elmer’s glue and Play-Doh any easier, it would ensure access to term papers and marketing plans. By using Open XML, I can be confident that I will always be able to access my old school projects, my current work product, and my children’s future brainstorms in one compatible and interoperable format.

PCs today are not souped up versions of my grandmother’s Selectric. Today’s document formats must be able to harness the true potential of data in order to create new efficiencies and new capabilities. And today’s formats should also faithfully fulfill the responsibility of maintaining our access to the data of yesterday, enabling new capabilities for today, while unlocking a whole new universe of possibilities for tomorrow. The past is always inextricably linked to both the present and the future. That makes the choice for Open XML so much simpler.

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