5 ms·

No, I just don't trust that the corporate entities and governments that own the hardware storing vast amounts of non-public data to last for the next 1000 years

by dsnuh 8y ago

No, I just don't trust that the corporate entities and governments that own the hardware storing vast amounts of non-public data to last for the next 1000 years, and that when they cease to exist, much of this information will be lost. I was being a bit hyperbolic with my quip about the ceremonial item. Barring a total collapse, you are probably correct that they would understand that it is a storage device. I guess it just depends on how likely you think it is there would be a new dark age within the next 1000 years...

fsloth 8y ago
The dark age really wasn't - not in terms of knowledge retention anyway. There was a decrease in population in europe which caused all sort of demographic maladies which caused the economic undevelopment we all associate with that period of europe, but the knowledge itself was preserved in books. Yes, it's much easier to learn a foreign script than to decipher a forgotten disk format where bytes are nanometers in size - but given the vast utility computing devices provide us, we need to fall pretty deep and far from where the current historical development is taking us to forget computational devices as a civilization entirely. If we have academia - and there is very little reason to think we won't - I'm sure there will be departments of digital information preservation who specialize in extracting cat videos (and probably digital physical simulacrums of the cutest cats) from the vast array of storage material our generation and the next will store. The question is this: At which point will youtube seize to exist? If it won't there is no reason to think it cannot forward the data it stores to the future millenia. I mean, catholic church is over a millenia old with archives stretching as far. Is there some reason (barring some hollywoodesque global calamity) youtube could not reach the same age?
- iainmerrick 8y ago
  The constant churn of new video formats is one possible reason. If YouTube doesn’t convert all their old videos, they may become effectively unplayable (see for example how many 80s and 90s AV formats have vanished). But even if they do convert all their old videos, repeated transcoding could gradually turn them into mush anyway. Those problems could certainly be avoided or worked around if YT takes sufficient care, but maybe they won’t have the right incentives to care continuously for the next 1000 years. I think it’s a much harder challenge than preserving paper and vellum artifacts.
  - voltagex_ 8y ago
    >The constant churn of new video formats is one possible reason. If YouTube doesn’t convert all their old videos, they may become effectively unplayable YouTube already does an encoding pass even with the most "perfect" h264 source. I wouldn't worry about video formats more than I'd worry about when YouTube shuts down. We're going to need an incredible increase in storage density before we can think of doing a full replica of YouTube (I wonder if we'll ever have the processing power to de-dupe the amount that's uploaded).

by dsnuh 8y ago

fsloth 8y ago

The dark age really wasn't - not in terms of knowledge retention anyway. There was a decrease in population in europe which caused all sort of demographic maladies which caused the economic undevelopment we all associate with that period of europe, but the knowledge itself was preserved in books. Yes, it's much easier to learn a foreign script than to decipher a forgotten disk format where bytes are nanometers in size - but given the vast utility computing devices provide us, we need to fall pretty deep and far from where the current historical development is taking us to forget computational devices as a civilization entirely. If we have academia - and there is very little reason to think we won't - I'm sure there will be departments of digital information preservation who specialize in extracting cat videos (and probably digital physical simulacrums of the cutest cats) from the vast array of storage material our generation and the next will store. The question is this: At which point will youtube seize to exist? If it won't there is no reason to think it cannot forward the data it stores to the future millenia. I mean, catholic church is over a millenia old with archives stretching as far. Is there some reason (barring some hollywoodesque global calamity) youtube could not reach the same age?

iainmerrick 8y ago
The constant churn of new video formats is one possible reason. If YouTube doesn’t convert all their old videos, they may become effectively unplayable (see for example how many 80s and 90s AV formats have vanished). But even if they do convert all their old videos, repeated transcoding could gradually turn them into mush anyway. Those problems could certainly be avoided or worked around if YT takes sufficient care, but maybe they won’t have the right incentives to care continuously for the next 1000 years. I think it’s a much harder challenge than preserving paper and vellum artifacts.
- voltagex_ 8y ago
  >The constant churn of new video formats is one possible reason. If YouTube doesn’t convert all their old videos, they may become effectively unplayable YouTube already does an encoding pass even with the most "perfect" h264 source. I wouldn't worry about video formats more than I'd worry about when YouTube shuts down. We're going to need an incredible increase in storage density before we can think of doing a full replica of YouTube (I wonder if we'll ever have the processing power to de-dupe the amount that's uploaded).