5 ms·

The part about the extinction of the Punic language made me wonder - what would it take to utterly erase an entire branch of knowledge today?

inglor_cz 5y ago
Burn it all on CDs and leave them for ten years in wet environment. Joking aside, our methods of recording information are hellishly vulnerable. This comes with the density of record. A clay tablet from Mesopotamia does not carry more than 2 kB of info, but 4000 years have gone by and it is still readable.
- nickbauman 5y ago
  We still can't read Linear A, the language of Minoan Greece.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Forgotten protocols are a thing until today. AFAIK we have problems deciphering the recorded transmissions of Lunokhod, the Soviet probe that landed on the Moon. Everyone who knew the code is dead.
    - lai-yin 5y ago
      Would be interesting to have a catalogue of endangered protocols/knowledge bases - similar to the endangered species list. Bit of a tangent: just occurred to me that part of the story arc for the show 'Mr. Robot' is hackers trying to erase an entire knowledge base - the debt history of billions of people. The protagonists try to achieve this goal by peaceful means, but...okay I'm going to stop spoiling it's an awesome show check it out.
      - p1esk 5y ago
        In Mr Robot the goal was to destroy a data base, not a knowledge base. Data != knowledge.
        lai-yin 5y ago
        Fair point!
    - spdegabrielle 5y ago
      The OAIS reference model was created to address the issue in space data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Archival_Information_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Archival_Information_Syst...
- wirrbel 5y ago
  I think the most present danger for books and preservation efforts today is of course deletion of digital records, but for books we have more printed copies everywhere than ever. But, the danger is really high that they will be all thrown out alongside of the yellowed Harry Potter books.
nickbauman 5y ago
I think it's possible with the rise of more and more "successful" dictatorships the Internet will become the domain of the state and we'll probably lose a lot very very quickly. So... that happening.
- dbtc 5y ago
  I'm long on paper.
  - vulcan01 5y ago
    Paper, meet fire. Seriously, though, there have been a lot of instances throughout history where scrolls and books have been burned at the order of the state. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the burning of the Library of Alexandria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria So I don't think paper is necessarily a "better" alternative.
    - theli0nheart 5y ago
      > Despite the widespread modern belief that the Library of Alexandria was burned once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the course of several centuries
remoquete 5y ago
There’s this scene in Rollerball (1975) where James Caan visits the most powerful supercomputer on Earth. The lead scientist candidly admits that they lost all the computers with XIII century data. I never forgot that scene. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/720ad4a5-5a51-4b97-b521-2a1d1fabf60c https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/720ad4a5-5a51-4b97-b521-2a1d1fa...
pacman2 5y ago
Not long. Lets assume we lose the ability to manufacture modern IT equipment. How long do we have? Estimated live expectancy of HDD, SDD and tapes? Most digital data would be lost within 10-20 years. Maybe sooner. We could at least try to pint out wikipedia.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cblconfederate 5y ago
an authoritarian ruler and hatred. cultures are being erased today https://thediplomat.com/2020/10/china-doubles-down-on-xinjiang-policy-amid-reports-of-cultural-erasure/ https://thediplomat.com/2020/10/china-doubles-down-on-xinjia... https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/a-violent-effort-to-rewrite-history/ https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/a-violent-effort-to-rewrite-hi... https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/taliban-pose-threat-afghan-cultural-heritage-sweep-back/story?id=79508223 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/taliban-pose-threat-afghan-c...
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    hum, considering that a lot of that culture is not digitized or even recorded, how is that related to flamewar?
    - dang 5y ago
      You're introducing hot, divisive political topics which are completely extraneous in this thread. When people do that, what happens is that the hot divisive contemporary political topic catches flame and we get a big, repetitive flamewar, drowning out the quieter, more obscure, and more intellectually interesting topic. That's the opposite of what we want on this site, which is supposed to be for curiosity, not perpetuating pre-existing battles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The big divisive topics are like black holes that suck in surrounding spacecraft. It's not a good idea to open a black hole in a thread like this. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20black%20hole%20-pigment&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
DonaldFisk 5y ago
While very little of the writings of Carthaginians has survived, the language itself (Phoenician/Punic) is well understood because a very close relative, which was mutually intelligible with it, has, however, survived: Hebrew. So if anything did turn up, we'd be able to read it. Contrast this with another ancient language: Etruscan. Although we have a number of longish texts in the language, we can't translate much of them. Etruscan has left no descendants, and Emperor Claudius's books on the language haven't survived. There is one bilingual text of more than a few words (the Pyrgi tablets). The other language is Phoenician. We can read that.

inglor_cz 5y ago

Burn it all on CDs and leave them for ten years in wet environment. Joking aside, our methods of recording information are hellishly vulnerable. This comes with the density of record. A clay tablet from Mesopotamia does not carry more than 2 kB of info, but 4000 years have gone by and it is still readable.

nickbauman 5y ago
We still can't read Linear A, the language of Minoan Greece.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Forgotten protocols are a thing until today. AFAIK we have problems deciphering the recorded transmissions of Lunokhod, the Soviet probe that landed on the Moon. Everyone who knew the code is dead.
  - lai-yin 5y ago
    Would be interesting to have a catalogue of endangered protocols/knowledge bases - similar to the endangered species list. Bit of a tangent: just occurred to me that part of the story arc for the show 'Mr. Robot' is hackers trying to erase an entire knowledge base - the debt history of billions of people. The protagonists try to achieve this goal by peaceful means, but...okay I'm going to stop spoiling it's an awesome show check it out.
    - p1esk 5y ago
      In Mr Robot the goal was to destroy a data base, not a knowledge base. Data != knowledge.
      - lai-yin 5y ago
        Fair point!
  - spdegabrielle 5y ago
    The OAIS reference model was created to address the issue in space data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Archival_Information_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Archival_Information_Syst...
wirrbel 5y ago
I think the most present danger for books and preservation efforts today is of course deletion of digital records, but for books we have more printed copies everywhere than ever. But, the danger is really high that they will be all thrown out alongside of the yellowed Harry Potter books.

nickbauman 5y ago

I think it's possible with the rise of more and more "successful" dictatorships the Internet will become the domain of the state and we'll probably lose a lot very very quickly. So... that happening.

dbtc 5y ago
I'm long on paper.
- vulcan01 5y ago
  Paper, meet fire. Seriously, though, there have been a lot of instances throughout history where scrolls and books have been burned at the order of the state. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the burning of the Library of Alexandria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria So I don't think paper is necessarily a "better" alternative.
  - theli0nheart 5y ago
    > Despite the widespread modern belief that the Library of Alexandria was burned once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the course of several centuries

remoquete 5y ago

There’s this scene in Rollerball (1975) where James Caan visits the most powerful supercomputer on Earth. The lead scientist candidly admits that they lost all the computers with XIII century data. I never forgot that scene. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/720ad4a5-5a51-4b97-b521-2a1d1fabf60c https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/720ad4a5-5a51-4b97-b521-2a1d1fa...

pacman2 5y ago

Not long. Lets assume we lose the ability to manufacture modern IT equipment. How long do we have? Estimated live expectancy of HDD, SDD and tapes? Most digital data would be lost within 10-20 years. Maybe sooner. We could at least try to pint out wikipedia.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cblconfederate 5y ago

an authoritarian ruler and hatred. cultures are being erased today https://thediplomat.com/2020/10/china-doubles-down-on-xinjiang-policy-amid-reports-of-cultural-erasure/ https://thediplomat.com/2020/10/china-doubles-down-on-xinjia... https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/a-violent-effort-to-rewrite-history/ https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/a-violent-effort-to-rewrite-hi... https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/taliban-pose-threat-afghan-cultural-heritage-sweep-back/story?id=79508223 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/taliban-pose-threat-afghan-c...

dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  hum, considering that a lot of that culture is not digitized or even recorded, how is that related to flamewar?
  - dang 5y ago
    You're introducing hot, divisive political topics which are completely extraneous in this thread. When people do that, what happens is that the hot divisive contemporary political topic catches flame and we get a big, repetitive flamewar, drowning out the quieter, more obscure, and more intellectually interesting topic. That's the opposite of what we want on this site, which is supposed to be for curiosity, not perpetuating pre-existing battles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The big divisive topics are like black holes that suck in surrounding spacecraft. It's not a good idea to open a black hole in a thread like this. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20black%20hole%20-pigment&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

DonaldFisk 5y ago

While very little of the writings of Carthaginians has survived, the language itself (Phoenician/Punic) is well understood because a very close relative, which was mutually intelligible with it, has, however, survived: Hebrew. So if anything did turn up, we'd be able to read it. Contrast this with another ancient language: Etruscan. Although we have a number of longish texts in the language, we can't translate much of them. Etruscan has left no descendants, and Emperor Claudius's books on the language haven't survived. There is one bilingual text of more than a few words (the Pyrgi tablets). The other language is Phoenician. We can read that.