Thread: Losing The Record of History.

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F word X 2

I don’t necessarily expect Sigg, or Malone, or anyone else here, to become so stirred up by my post that they immediately rush off to do something about it. But maybe the idea will foment for a while in someone’s mind - maybe even in a lurker’s - and one day a result will come about. I hope so.

We know relatively little about anything that occurred more than six thousand years ago, when writing was invented.

Today, everything is going online. Hard copy stuff - like the ancient Assyrian’s clay tablets and every other tangible recording medium since - is all vanishing. Soon there will be no hard evidence of anything.

So what, do I hear you say? Click a button and retrieve it?

Yeah, right.

We all know how perfect online systems are. Look at this fucking shambles of a site where we are now. It could vanish in an instant.

And this is the risk recorded history faces.




What do you young people think of this scenario:

Your children’s children may say to you one day, “Grandpa, can you show us some pictures or read us some stories of what life was like back in 2030?”

When you have to say, “Sorry, there was a glitch in the system and everything vanished," you'll look a real idiot in their eyes, won’t you?



Don’t say it can’t happen.

If I can think of it, it can happen.

We run the risk of going back to a time when there was no history recorded. Just like the Neolithic people, who left nothing to entertain us with, we also may finish up leaving nothing behind for future times.

So what I’m hoping is this:

Somewhere out there, there’s someone young enough, energetic enough, and concerned enough, to take this idea of vanishing history and make a real nuisance of themselves in the corridors of power - until another someone, an occupant of those corridors of power, realises the sheer enormity of the loss the world will face when some idiot pushes a wrong button, and takes whatever steps are necessary to ensure that everything, bar nothing, is recorded somewhere that doesn’t rely on fucking computers.

I had a similar thought not so long ago concerning the irreplaceable contents of my hard drive. Problem was, the bloody printer wouldn't work.... So it begins.

Ox, we have tons of books and newspapers recording this material. If there was ever a world-wide glitch that destroyed the data on all of our computers, we'd be in some trouble. But I think as things currently stand, we'd be able to recover the vast majority of that data.

That said, I'm not opposed to a world-wide, offline data back-up, provided you have some suggestions on how to implement it.

Have OX commence dictating the lot to Kim Peak

This is an interesting topic. If you want something that will last effectively forever, it won't be any media we currently use. Books and paper might last a thousand years. Maybe.

First thing is to decide what material and what storage method to use. Stone tablets are semi-permanent, but only at the macro level. You would be hard pressed to get many engraved words on a slab or stone becasue they need to be large to have deifnition. Some metal alloy that can be embossed or engraved might work. Paper certainly isn't the answer.

Is there any final word on how long digital laser-etched DVD's and such last, assuming they are protected from outside forces?

Who is working on this? The UN doesn't seem to move in concert enough to handle this. I know the US Library of Congress has huge archives of documents and film and such in climate controlled secure locations, but even that is only a holding measure.

CD/DVD's last about a decade no matter how well you take care of them. The encoding layer degrades and peels from the substrate.

But really, the idea of an internet-wide glitch is pretty goofy. The 'net isn't a big single library, it's millions and millions of discreet libraries that are physically seperate and only occasionally connected. It's also funny to think that with contemporary ease of duplication and multiple redundancy that 'human knowledge' is somehow more at risk now than when duplication was an order of magnitude more time and labor and money intensive.

You can now buy super cheap multi-gig thumb drives and make perfect copies in moments with the touch of a few keys. Back your shit up and store it. Solid state drives, if kept away from intense magnetism and moisture, will last centuries. The only thing that can threaten 'human knowledge' as a whole in electronic form is nuclear war.

Hey, we're destroying the world at an ever-increasing rate. There may be nobody around to look back on this era in a few thousand years!

And those who do are likely to view it as an age of greed and stupidity. Maybe we don't deserve our current efforts being recorded for posterity.

Funny how the people in a society feel as if it is going on forever when none of them ever have. I don't know how but going on past evidence I would say that it is almost certain this society will collapse at some point along with things like a loss of the power supply. The idea of the web though is that a part can be wiped out without losing the whole, it was originally a military concept, and that has happened before. Christianity destroyed a lot of the "Heathen" books and a hugre amount of Greek knowledge was lost to us but then regained when the libraries of Islam became available through an opening up of trade through the Italian city states, leading to the Renaissance. So if a corner keeps going it can re-educate the world. Those paper libraries have not vanished either, they may have been made available on line but the physical bricks and mortar have not gone away.

Originally Posted by HalcyonZephyr

Hey, we're destroying the world at an ever-increasing rate. There may be nobody around to look back on this era in a few thousand years!

And those who do are likely to view it as an age of greed and stupidity. Maybe we don't deserve our current efforts being recorded for posterity.

Your first point seems perfectly valid, but I don't see why we should stand out for greed and stupidity, they seem to be pretty universal features of man's history. Manufacturing gives us more to be greedy and stupid with but I don't think the people have changed much.