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I would dearly love to see a ruggedized, solar-powered version of this device created for our descendants. In case industrial civilization, well.. fails to go

I would dearly love to see a ruggedized, solar-powered version of this device created for our descendants. In case industrial civilization, well.. fails to go the distance. A Wikipedia-equivalent volume of paper is rather bulky and fragile.

jbrennan 15y ago
If we wrote "Don't Panic" on it, it'd be perfect.
- breadbox 15y ago
  Damn you; I already consider the absence of these words to be a design flaw.
  - SteveMcQwark 15y ago
    I was considering their claim that it's easy to turn on but difficult to turn off to be a design flaw.
mmastrac 15y ago
The real technical challenge would be figuring out how to store 16GB of data reliably for that long, I would wager. You'd probably need to use some sort of optical storage that would be chemically stable over the time you expect it to keep. I'm no expert in this domain, so I'm not sure what this would look like, or if there's already a way to do this in a small enough form factor to be feasible and relatively inexpensive.
- asciilifeform 15y ago
  How about mask ROM? 100+ years easily (at least in theory.)
ComputerGuru 15y ago
Again and again, this topic keeps coming up and the surprising truth is: paper is the answer. Don't discount it. There was entire writeup about this (I think it was posted to HN) that I can no longer find and would be grateful if someone could point me at (my Google-Fu is failing me on this one) that of all the data storage mechanisms we have, paper is the one that we best know how to maintain and preserve. It's nowhere near as "bulky" as people make it out to be, and when done right and taken care of properly, can last centuries. Here's a link that touches on the topic of preserving info for future generations, a great read: http://www2.library.ucla.edu/about/2483.cfm http://www2.library.ucla.edu/about/2483.cfm (What do you preserve? How do you do it? Why? For whom?) The other article I was referring to earlier pointed out the pitfalls with all the modern "wonders" of storage and how woefully inadequate they would be for attempting to preserve knowledge/data in the big picture. Namely interfaces, specs, requirements, readers, electricity, and all the other goodies that silently play their role in powering your USB stick or bluray disc.
- asciilifeform 15y ago
  Paper is a good answer. Unless civilization has collapsed, and libraries are burning. (They are burning - or rather, being closed down permanently, one after another, right now in the USA.) Paper is the answer, unless you are a refugee living in your car (should you still have gas) or running with what you can carry. Paper is not the answer for a pauper with no room to call his own, nor for a factory hand living in a dormitory. There are many people alive right now for whom paper is already not the answer. But some of them could benefit from a Wikipedia "gameboy." Yours or my paper library will carry knowledge into the ages quite well - until some vagrant burns it to warm himself in the wintertime. A piece of electronics, on the other hand - assuming we could make one that really lasts - could be passed down as an heirloom. And, should it begin to flicker out, the words could always be read off and set to paper.
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  > Again and again, this topic keeps coming up and the surprising truth is: paper is the answer. Don't discount it. Paper is good, but clay tablets FTW.

jbrennan 15y ago

If we wrote "Don't Panic" on it, it'd be perfect.

breadbox 15y ago
Damn you; I already consider the absence of these words to be a design flaw.
- SteveMcQwark 15y ago
  I was considering their claim that it's easy to turn on but difficult to turn off to be a design flaw.

mmastrac 15y ago

The real technical challenge would be figuring out how to store 16GB of data reliably for that long, I would wager. You'd probably need to use some sort of optical storage that would be chemically stable over the time you expect it to keep. I'm no expert in this domain, so I'm not sure what this would look like, or if there's already a way to do this in a small enough form factor to be feasible and relatively inexpensive.

asciilifeform 15y ago
How about mask ROM? 100+ years easily (at least in theory.)

ComputerGuru 15y ago

Again and again, this topic keeps coming up and the surprising truth is: paper is the answer. Don't discount it. There was entire writeup about this (I think it was posted to HN) that I can no longer find and would be grateful if someone could point me at (my Google-Fu is failing me on this one) that of all the data storage mechanisms we have, paper is the one that we best know how to maintain and preserve. It's nowhere near as "bulky" as people make it out to be, and when done right and taken care of properly, can last centuries. Here's a link that touches on the topic of preserving info for future generations, a great read: http://www2.library.ucla.edu/about/2483.cfm http://www2.library.ucla.edu/about/2483.cfm (What do you preserve? How do you do it? Why? For whom?) The other article I was referring to earlier pointed out the pitfalls with all the modern "wonders" of storage and how woefully inadequate they would be for attempting to preserve knowledge/data in the big picture. Namely interfaces, specs, requirements, readers, electricity, and all the other goodies that silently play their role in powering your USB stick or bluray disc.

asciilifeform 15y ago
Paper is a good answer. Unless civilization has collapsed, and libraries are burning. (They are burning - or rather, being closed down permanently, one after another, right now in the USA.) Paper is the answer, unless you are a refugee living in your car (should you still have gas) or running with what you can carry. Paper is not the answer for a pauper with no room to call his own, nor for a factory hand living in a dormitory. There are many people alive right now for whom paper is already not the answer. But some of them could benefit from a Wikipedia "gameboy." Yours or my paper library will carry knowledge into the ages quite well - until some vagrant burns it to warm himself in the wintertime. A piece of electronics, on the other hand - assuming we could make one that really lasts - could be passed down as an heirloom. And, should it begin to flicker out, the words could always be read off and set to paper.
michael_dorfman 15y ago
> Again and again, this topic keeps coming up and the surprising truth is: paper is the answer. Don't discount it. Paper is good, but clay tablets FTW.