The argument in To Mark-up or Not To Mark-up is far from balanced, indeed, it screams

MARK-UP MARK-UP MARK-UP!!!

Though historians might have greater luck securing further funding for markup projects by demonstrating the ease with which marked-up digital material can be searched, and the contribution such material can make to ongoing projects. Marking up digitized data would still be difficult and expensive, (and in cases of digitizing GIS data, painful) but the demonstrated benefit would attract further funding, leading to more demonstrable benefits, etc….

I admit it, I used wikipedia to familiarize myself with the particulars of Root Canal surgery. of course I’d heard the phrase, like here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojhg1zTOef8
and i hope this embeds properly.
but I had no idea what was involved, and now, enlightened, I don’t think comparing digitization to hollowing out and capping a dying or damaged tooth was at all fair. First, it assumes the analog formats are dying or damaged. Analog formats are only subject to decay at a faster rate than digital forms. Second, whether analog or digital, the users are still human, and are therefore limited by our biology in our ability to perceive the information. This is a harder limit on our comprehension and appreciation than any vagaries of technology. Whether the “tooth” is made of enamel or dental cement, it remains a tooth, not a lip or a tongue.