An elegant medium, for a civilized age

Last summer, Science published a study from researchers at Harvard who had successfully encoded bits of digital information in strands of DNA. A few days ago, another paper was published demonstrating that researchers had done it again, this time having improved the accuracy, capacity and efficiency of the technique. This recent experiment successfully converted 739 kilobytes of digital data into genetic code, which was then retrieved without a single error. Among the information translated was the entire collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Anyway, it got me thinking about the sonnets and inspired me to revisit several of them. And I am so glad I did because golly they’re good. Four hundred years of distance and they're still relevant. One of them, Sonnet 55, especially stands out to me in light of all of the current public discussions about The Information. It recalls another way of preserving and imparting information... an age-old method, both accessible and powerful. And unlike other media used for recording information, it is not static. In fact, I would say that it is persistent precisely because of its mutability. It is adaptable and interpretive and imperfect. It can't be buried or owned or pinned down. And because of this, it can link people through time and space. What I'm talking about is language.

LV
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents 
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

- William Shakespeare