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You're understating how long good-quality paper will last. Proper archival paper lasts hundreds of years without fading or discolouration—we have no idea what t
by bccdee 3y ago
You're understating how long good-quality paper will last. Proper archival paper lasts hundreds of years without fading or discolouration—we have no idea what the upper limit on its lifetime is.
And, in practice, it doesn't matter whether the storage medium can't be read because it's damaged or because the machine to read it doesn't exist anymore. Either you can read it or you can't.
- eviks 3y agoOf course it matters a great deal - you can build the machine again
- bccdee 3y agoNot necessarily. You can't just build a high-powered microscope out of twigs and leaves. You need sophisticated manufacturing tools. Mineral resources. Where are we going to encode the knowledge of how to build or acquire these things, if already having them is a prerequisite for accessing any of our records? Either you can read it—i.e. it is intact and you have the means to access the information stored inside—or you can't.
- eviks 3y ago> Where are we going to encode the knowledge of how to build or acquire these things, if already having them is a prerequisite for accessing any of our records? It's not a prerequisite, you can have a smaller batch of knowledge on how to build the tools to access all the knowledge in various other more accessible systems. Besides, you presuppose that just because there is no machine, there is also no knowledge re. how to build a machine and you only have twigs and leaves. That's a false universal assumption, you could just as well be in a situation where you don't have the machine, but you have tools and resources to build it. This is yet another difference to the "the medium is broken and can't be used" situation