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Several commenters here protest that the information might not be readable by any devices 50 years from now. But the application of the tech isn't a new media p
by hughw 11y ago
Several commenters here protest that the information might not be readable by any devices 50 years from now. But the application of the tech isn't a new media player. It's preserving the literature of our civilization across potential dark ages. If future civilizations discover these media, they'll easily discern that they contain encoded information, and crack the code. Imagine we were able to recover indestructible, encoded books from the library of Alexandria. Cryptographers would soon discover the code.
The intent isn't to illuminate the dark ages when it might be impossible to decode the texts. The intent is to preserve for a time beyond the dark ages, when knowledge and culture return.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoI think it's more likely a hypothetical dark age would see them as interesting jewellery, and drill holes in them so they could be worn as necklaces. Technology has an historical event horizon. If an item is on the wrong side of it, it's literally incomprehensible. Items like these are only useful to a culture that has already reached a similar technological level, give or take some small time delta. That makes them a very bad way indeed to preserve information about science and technology.