5 ms·

The second part of your answer is hilarious and depressing.

franky47 5y ago
Never underestimate the power of basic human needs over layers of abstractions. Software's intangibility will be its downfall when our modern society eventually collapses.
- clarkmoody 5y ago
  Hopefully some remnant of humanity will cast out among the stars with ultra-high density storage holding archives of most of human knowledge.
  - jeremyjh 5y ago
    How is that going to repair anyone's kettle?
    - zymhan 5y ago
      It may help if the kettle is somewhere between the Earth and Mars :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
  - gzer0 5y ago
    The Voyager Golden Record is an attempt to do this. It's a record that contains sounds and images to portray life on earth [1]. This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours - President Jimmy Carter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
  - genewitch 5y ago
    a song i composed is being sent to the moon on an SD card or flash drive of some sort, i was told. Realistically if there is some faster-than-light mechanism, any interested alien or human could just "fast forward" and "rewind" through time to listen/watch our broadcasts from the appropriate distance from the original location. Barring that, I'm guessing the equivalent of stone tablets, or the golden record are the best bet. I wouldn't place any bets on anything that requires magnetism or electricity to survive in open space for long enough to matter. Like, platter bit-flips due to radiation from outer space are a thing, and current leakage would eventually render something like SSDs unreadable. So hard copy for earth, radio and hard copy for the universe?
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    And some ancient civilization will entertain themselves by bidding against each other to win the rights to the contents of the archive.
- ironmagma 5y ago
  When society collapses, software of any kind will probably be among the least of our concerns.
  - pc86 5y ago
    Wait so I shouldn't be spending all this time learning vi?
    - jfabre 5y ago
      depends on how gullible you are..
    - znpy 5y ago
      No, you should learn emacs. M-x purify-water is gonna save a lot of people one day.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      I guess there’s always the chance that society is collapsing because not enough people are trained with software to fix whatever the problem is.
      - theK 5y ago
        Yes, the idiocracy scenario does appear more and more relevant when you go out and look around and realize that 99.9% of civilization treats tech just as black box appliances....
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  It always brings me joy to read doomsday prophecies from decades, centuries, and millenia past. They were legion -- so confident, yet so wrong. I hope your predictions bring similar joy to future readers in the decades, centuries, and millenia to come.
  - LadyCailin 5y ago
    I was very young at the time, but I was absolutely convinced that the world would end at 2020. It didn’t, and that deeply ingrained in me a very substantial amount of skepticism from doomsdaysayers. The only doomsday I believe in now for absolute certainty is the heat death of the universe, but no one reading this will be around for that.
    - goatlover 5y ago
      There was quite a lot of doomsday talk during the Cold War, and there has been periodic environmental doomsday predictions since the 60s, starting with overpopulation and chemicals like DDT. Interspersed with that was AI and nanotech apocalyptic concerns. Climate change is the latest. The idea that civilization will manage to avoid the worst case scenarios and find its way through is not as exciting. You probably won't sell as many books or public appearances that way. And it doesn't make for the best Black Mirror episodes. Although there are a couple exceptions.
      - idiotsecant 5y ago
        This is a little bit like the bird who avoids the cat for 3 days in a row using that as evidence that cats can't eat birds. Be careful extrapolating possible futures only by sampling past events. That's why we have physics, because we are notoriously bad at doing that with just our intuition. Climate change is a pretty simple proposal with pretty simple and direct evidence. Carbon traps light, which means more heat is trapped within the atmosphere. We can measure the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. That atmosphere will obey physics. More heat will be trapped.
        5y ago

Never underestimate the power of basic human needs over layers of abstractions. Software's intangibility will be its downfall when our modern society eventually collapses.

clarkmoody 5y ago
Hopefully some remnant of humanity will cast out among the stars with ultra-high density storage holding archives of most of human knowledge.
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  How is that going to repair anyone's kettle?
  - zymhan 5y ago
    It may help if the kettle is somewhere between the Earth and Mars :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
- gzer0 5y ago
  The Voyager Golden Record is an attempt to do this. It's a record that contains sounds and images to portray life on earth [1]. This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours - President Jimmy Carter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
- genewitch 5y ago
  a song i composed is being sent to the moon on an SD card or flash drive of some sort, i was told. Realistically if there is some faster-than-light mechanism, any interested alien or human could just "fast forward" and "rewind" through time to listen/watch our broadcasts from the appropriate distance from the original location. Barring that, I'm guessing the equivalent of stone tablets, or the golden record are the best bet. I wouldn't place any bets on anything that requires magnetism or electricity to survive in open space for long enough to matter. Like, platter bit-flips due to radiation from outer space are a thing, and current leakage would eventually render something like SSDs unreadable. So hard copy for earth, radio and hard copy for the universe?
- wrycoder 5y ago
  And some ancient civilization will entertain themselves by bidding against each other to win the rights to the contents of the archive.
ironmagma 5y ago
When society collapses, software of any kind will probably be among the least of our concerns.
- pc86 5y ago
  Wait so I shouldn't be spending all this time learning vi?
  - jfabre 5y ago
    depends on how gullible you are..
  - znpy 5y ago
    No, you should learn emacs. M-x purify-water is gonna save a lot of people one day.
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    I guess there’s always the chance that society is collapsing because not enough people are trained with software to fix whatever the problem is.
    - theK 5y ago
      Yes, the idiocracy scenario does appear more and more relevant when you go out and look around and realize that 99.9% of civilization treats tech just as black box appliances....
jjoonathan 5y ago
It always brings me joy to read doomsday prophecies from decades, centuries, and millenia past. They were legion -- so confident, yet so wrong. I hope your predictions bring similar joy to future readers in the decades, centuries, and millenia to come.
- LadyCailin 5y ago
  I was very young at the time, but I was absolutely convinced that the world would end at 2020. It didn’t, and that deeply ingrained in me a very substantial amount of skepticism from doomsdaysayers. The only doomsday I believe in now for absolute certainty is the heat death of the universe, but no one reading this will be around for that.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    There was quite a lot of doomsday talk during the Cold War, and there has been periodic environmental doomsday predictions since the 60s, starting with overpopulation and chemicals like DDT. Interspersed with that was AI and nanotech apocalyptic concerns. Climate change is the latest. The idea that civilization will manage to avoid the worst case scenarios and find its way through is not as exciting. You probably won't sell as many books or public appearances that way. And it doesn't make for the best Black Mirror episodes. Although there are a couple exceptions.
    - idiotsecant 5y ago
      This is a little bit like the bird who avoids the cat for 3 days in a row using that as evidence that cats can't eat birds. Be careful extrapolating possible futures only by sampling past events. That's why we have physics, because we are notoriously bad at doing that with just our intuition. Climate change is a pretty simple proposal with pretty simple and direct evidence. Carbon traps light, which means more heat is trapped within the atmosphere. We can measure the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. That atmosphere will obey physics. More heat will be trapped.
      - 5y ago