5 ms·

Not necessarily. The vast majority of recording media we have are not nearly as robust as stone or vellum. Not much outside of archival paper will survive.

by cultus 7y ago

freehunter 7y ago
While that's true, the vast majority of things we record are not worth keeping for long time frames. There's still a lot of stuff that gets printed on metals, stones, archival media, etc. Not to mention we have modern archival methods that didn't exist back then. Barring a simultaneous complete and total collapse of all civilizations on Earth, we'll still be passing vastly more information on to future generations than previous generations ever did.
- blattimwind 7y ago
  I assume there are other archives like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen_underground_archive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen_underground_arc... Designed to withstand 70s nuclear war scenarios, among other things. Stores about 1 billion 35 mm images at the moment.
- est31 7y ago
  > Barring a simultaneous complete and total collapse of all civilizations on Earth Many archives are not replicated, at least not including all important pieces. Also note that what's worth keeping vs what's unimportant might change over time. Bach and Vivaldi only became famous after their death. I don't say that everything should be preserved forever, just that it's kept in mind.
  - azernik 7y ago
    Right now, Spotify and Apple Music and Google Play are holding on to recordings, in hundreds of replicas, of garage bands who've only been heard by 1000 people in their whole history. If one of those services goes out of businesses, there are others. Archivists like the Library of Congress use in-house solutions comparable to S3 Glacier or Google Archival Storage, where use of longer-lived media and copying to new media is cheap enough to preserve fantastic amounts of information. A caveat - though the risk of losing art due to loss or destruction of physical media is lower than ever, we still have to contend with intentional destruction of copies by the creator, for business or security reasons.
  - Godel_unicode 7y ago
    r/datahorders would like to have a word with you. Also the internet archive, the Google art/book projects, Wikipedia, etc.

Not necessarily. The vast majority of recording media we have are not nearly as robust as stone or vellum. Not much outside of archival paper will survive.

by cultus 7y ago

Not necessarily. The vast majority of recording media we have are not nearly as robust as stone or vellum. Not much outside of archival paper will survive.

freehunter 7y ago

While that's true, the vast majority of things we record are not worth keeping for long time frames. There's still a lot of stuff that gets printed on metals, stones, archival media, etc. Not to mention we have modern archival methods that didn't exist back then. Barring a simultaneous complete and total collapse of all civilizations on Earth, we'll still be passing vastly more information on to future generations than previous generations ever did.

blattimwind 7y ago
I assume there are other archives like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen_underground_archive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen_underground_arc... Designed to withstand 70s nuclear war scenarios, among other things. Stores about 1 billion 35 mm images at the moment.
est31 7y ago
> Barring a simultaneous complete and total collapse of all civilizations on Earth Many archives are not replicated, at least not including all important pieces. Also note that what's worth keeping vs what's unimportant might change over time. Bach and Vivaldi only became famous after their death. I don't say that everything should be preserved forever, just that it's kept in mind.
- azernik 7y ago
  Right now, Spotify and Apple Music and Google Play are holding on to recordings, in hundreds of replicas, of garage bands who've only been heard by 1000 people in their whole history. If one of those services goes out of businesses, there are others. Archivists like the Library of Congress use in-house solutions comparable to S3 Glacier or Google Archival Storage, where use of longer-lived media and copying to new media is cheap enough to preserve fantastic amounts of information. A caveat - though the risk of losing art due to loss or destruction of physical media is lower than ever, we still have to contend with intentional destruction of copies by the creator, for business or security reasons.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  r/datahorders would like to have a word with you. Also the internet archive, the Google art/book projects, Wikipedia, etc.