3 ms·
I think you're correct about the importance of the context in which the expertise exists in. But even so, I think it's clear that with more broad documentation
by rrmm 6y ago
I think you're correct about the importance of the context in which the expertise exists in.
But even so, I think it's clear that with more broad documentation, we are in a better position to pick up the expertise of the past.
So in the future, all the wonderful, nutty youtubers that keep alive old arts and give demos would be especially invaluable. Not just in clarifying specific techniques and knowledge, but by demonstrating a general approach to problems that existed at the current time.
I've been watching all sorts of things the past couple of months like this: People making vacuum tubes, repairing vacuum tube equipment, older mainframe technologies like ancient versions of MVS, machining parts on equipment from the '30's.
None of it is how-things-are-done in a cutting edge factory or step by step directions on how to reproduce an important cultural artifact, but from the perspective of future people, it will be a valuable aid to gathering that context.
One I'm particularly reminded of is Clickspring on youtube who is building an antikythera mechanism. Even though we have the partial artifact, so little is known concerning metal working technologies of the time that it seems to be an anachronism completely alien to its time of origin.
His approach is to explore what technologies would make sense to a working craftsman of any era (which also could be surmised to have existed in the era). It's interesting to watch and it has apparently born fruit in terms discovering academically important information about the device.
- GuiA 6y agoTotally agree with you, with the one caveat that Youtube is not operated with long term accessibility in mind. Videos routinely are removed by their creator, or get taken down for silly reasons. And one day Youtube will disappear as well. Archive the channels you care about - they might otherwise be impossible to find in a few decades, or a few years. Youtube-dl is one of my favorite pieces of software. Digital artefacts could be, paradoxically, less durable going in the future - if you write and publish a physical book, it might get forgotten in a library somewhere and rediscovered 200 years after you die. If you publish an ebook on your website and die and no one cares, the probability of anyone discovering it by happenstance 200 years later goes down to 0.
- rrmm 6y agoThis is a very unsolved problem. It doesn't take much foresight to anticipate a Library of Alexandria v2.0 around the corner. Certainly, we can and should individually archive what's important to us, but more generally (archiving information for the next 1000 years say), I dunno. I hope someone will figure it out.
- masnao 6y ago"there was a library in the distant past that held the entirety of human knowledge. but all was lost when the ancient people who built it lost their 3rd-party cookie trade route to the European invaders"
- FartyMcFarter 6y ago> If you publish an ebook on your website and die and no one cares, the probability of anyone discovering it by happenstance 200 years later goes down to 0. This seems overly pessimistic given the existence of archive.org (they accept donations!). If archival institutions keep existing and improving their search and accessibility, it seems very possible that random websites will be accessible for a long time to come; 200 years is definitely within the realm of feasibility.