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Ask HN: How can we make the world's code discoverable in 10K years?
Global extinction level event, all our culture lost, but we want to keep a record of what we were doing. A library of Alexandria built in this age would contain much computer code. How to archive it in a format that's likely to be understood by future civilizations ?
- airframeng 11y agoSame way we have records from 10K years ago, by keeping hard copies. Pull the plug and all e-records become inaccessible.
- 1arity 11y agoYeah, but hard copies on what? Discs, paper, what's the medium with the 10K year time horizon ? Wait, I got it. Stone Tablets. Just have to get a Google project off the ground to inscribe all the worlds code in slate.
- Mimu 11y agoI don't see the value of saving 'code'. Some algorithms maybe but I do believe the library of Alexandria is about ideas not tools.
- 1arity 11y agoMinimum description length could be a useful archival principle.
- bbcbasic 11y agoBitcoin blockchain!
- 1arity 11y agoAn idea is a tool is an idea. Or an idea is a description of a tool. In any case, code is a history of our time. A computed history. It encodes the way we thought about things, reflected in the way we arranged our systems of doing things. There's an argument to be made that it is a highly efficient description -- it might be possible to accurately rebuild a fallen civilization if we could read its computer code. At the very least, we'd have a start on rebuilding its infrastructure. The writings of a time encode its culture, you can rebuild a culture from that. The Renaissance did this with the culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Code is a medium, of today. It works to save that, if we value the preservation of our time.