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> Is there an international effort to document and preserve human knowledge so if/when disaster strikes, we can get back on our feet sooner rather than later? I

> Is there an international effort to document and preserve human knowledge so if/when disaster strikes, we can get back on our feet sooner rather than later? In this case the simpler technologies need to be documented with more importance because they will be far easier to reconstruct than more advanced ones. This is one of the things I have been thinking about lately a lot. Our current society is very fragile because of all the high tech. If there is a single large disaster we can be easily thrown back a few decades from a technological point of view because the knowledge of high tech (e.g. creating computer chips, hard drives, ...) is concentrated in a few places. If those places and people are gone then we will have a serious problem. We are not even able to produce solar cells after a disaster but we have to go back to burning coal and wood for electricity. There needs to be some sort of book series which teaches our basic knowledge (medicine, electricity, math, physics, ...) in a way that it can be restored rather easily after a large disaster.

Retric 9y ago
Physical chips would be a huge starting point to redeveloping computers a second time. The population loss associated with that kind of knowledge loss seems like a much bigger issue. We need vast economies of scale to continue current chip production. A world population at say 1% our current size would have issues building and maintaining modern equipment. PS: Also, with a smaller population hydro power would easily meet our energy needs. Long enough to bootstrap wind / solar again.
- yoodenvranx 9y ago
  > We need vast economies of scale to continue current chip production They don't actually need current chips, but recreating something along the lines of an early Z80 would be an enormous win for a society which is rebuilding itself from scratch. > Long enough to bootstrap wind / solar again. wind power might be actually better for local development. You just need some magnets and some coils and you have electricity to power a few lightbulbs (well, actually someone has to build lightbulbs or leds...)
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  Depending on how it happened, the world population at 1% means that there's all this infrastructure and existing inventory to support up to 100x more people. Hopefully that should be sufficient to get a long way back to where we left off.

Retric 9y ago

Physical chips would be a huge starting point to redeveloping computers a second time. The population loss associated with that kind of knowledge loss seems like a much bigger issue. We need vast economies of scale to continue current chip production. A world population at say 1% our current size would have issues building and maintaining modern equipment. PS: Also, with a smaller population hydro power would easily meet our energy needs. Long enough to bootstrap wind / solar again.

yoodenvranx 9y ago
> We need vast economies of scale to continue current chip production They don't actually need current chips, but recreating something along the lines of an early Z80 would be an enormous win for a society which is rebuilding itself from scratch. > Long enough to bootstrap wind / solar again. wind power might be actually better for local development. You just need some magnets and some coils and you have electricity to power a few lightbulbs (well, actually someone has to build lightbulbs or leds...)
theandrewbailey 9y ago
Depending on how it happened, the world population at 1% means that there's all this infrastructure and existing inventory to support up to 100x more people. Hopefully that should be sufficient to get a long way back to where we left off.