Digital Amnesia

[AutomatedMan]

I just finished up watching the Digital Amesia (on [html=http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/digital-amnesia/] Top Documentary Films[/html] and Youtube. The documentary focused on how our culture is moving towards more ephemeral media like ebooks and websites from physical media like books and magazines. It showcased a few organizatinos that are categorizing different forms of media, digitizing print media and archiving websites. The Long Now Foundation was the most interesting to me, as they managed to create a metallic disk that holds all of the worlds known spoken languages along with regional information associated with them.

One troubling thing to consider is, as one interviewee noted, is that our lives are increasingly being saved on a hard drive. Even more troubling is the fact that, in the event of a cosmic event, a pole flip or powerful solar storm, those drives, and our digitized history would be toast (unless they were in a Faraday cage!). At least, for the time being, we have a platform like this forum to share our knowledge on!

 

[MusicMan]

I think that you have brought up an important point, AutomatedMan, and I don't think people really realise how short lived magnetic media is, compared even to paper copy. Even if you managed to keep the magnetic field intact, the tape or disc would soon deteriorate anyway. Paper is not perfect either. If you look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, (papyrus or leather, even copper) they were treated specially to preserve them, but after 2,000 years they did not fare so well.
So what to do?

Some of the world's major knowledge has come from structures such as the pyramids, stone circles, henges and menhirs.
Others such as obelisks have also provided useful knowledge.

Perhaps this would make a suitable question for the C's;

"How to protect knowledge, when 'Knowledge Protects'?"

 

[3DStudent]

"How to protect knowledge, when 'Knowledge Protects'?"

I like that notion. :) We need something like quantum storage that would last a long time and deteriorate less. It reminds me of using DNA for storage. That's how our genetic information is stored, no? And we're wave reading consciousness units.