4 ms·

This is the coolest thing I've read this year. It reads like science fiction. Who would even imagine it's possible to read text from a 2000 year-old rolled up b

This is the coolest thing I've read this year. It reads like science fiction. Who would even imagine it's possible to read text from a 2000 year-old rolled up burnt-crisp paper?

dougmwne 3y ago
It’s a 270 year archaeological and technological culmination. The scrolls were dug up in 1752. It took the collective developments of the Industrial Revolution, the sciences all our engineering and manufacturing prowess to discover, preserve and scan the scrolls. Then the final cherry on top of the current AI revolution that can create inferences and connections that are beyond the human mind to even understand. And out pops 2000 year-old wisdom of the ancients.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  It is a bit fitting that it turns out the scroll is about the relationship between enjoyment and abundance. It looks like, from what we can gather, the author decides that should something be hard to get, that doesn’t lead to greater enjoyment. But, it seems that the archaeologists have found an awful lot of joy in how “rare” access to these scrolls is!
- jfengel 3y ago
  One other thing that was required: the patience not to ruin it. So much has been lost to well-meaning archaeologists who dug up and threw away things that they didn't think were important. They tried cleaning and preservation techniques on artifacts without testing, sometimes ruining them in the process. They ripped things out of context, and "restored" them based on guesses that were sometimes flagrantly wrong. Of course they couldn't be expected to know everything that would come in the future, so blame can sometimes perhaps be muted. But it's especially positive that they extricated these particular objects very carefully and just waited for a way to extract information that they could hardly have hoped for.
linsomniac 3y ago
Speaking of "reading like sci-fi", what's that book where they scan an entire library of books, descructively, by feeding them into a "book chipper" like device that chops the books up into little pieces, vacuums those pieces up and scans the pieces as they flow through, reconstructing the original text by putting the scanned results together like so many jigsaw puzzles? It was a subplot of the book, but I can't for the life of me remember what book it was.
- prezjordan 3y ago
  http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1109 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1109 Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (ChatGPT helped with the search)
- saled 3y ago
  FYI it seems ChatGPT could have answered this for you. > The book you're describing sounds like "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge. In this near-future sci-fi novel, set in 2025, one of the subplots involves a project called the "Library Project," where the UCSD (University of California, San Diego) library decides to digitize its entire collection. The process is somewhat as you described: books are destructively scanned by being shredded into tiny pieces, which are then scanned and digitized, with the text being reconstructed from the scans. This process is a part of the broader themes of the book, which include the effects of technology on society and the concept of "wearable computing" and augmented reality. Vernor Vinge, a retired San Diego State University professor of mathematics, computer scientist, and Hugo Award-winning author, is well-known for his works in the science fiction genre, especially for exploring the concept of the technological singularity.
  - gwern 3y ago
    I'm not surprised ChatGPT can answer it - I'm not sure why, but _Rainbows End_ is one of the most commonly-asked about SF books like that. Everyone remembers the book-tornado doing shotgun sequencing, but they can never remember its name or anything else that happens. I guess that's the problem with having a technology whose mental image is so compelling but also mostly disconnected to the rest of the book. (I know I can't tell you much about the rest without rereading the WP entry.)
yourapostasy 3y ago
I’m now wavering a bit on my earlier dismissal of people freezing their bodies for an indeterminate future revival. I could probably get into a science fiction story with this premise: Instead of relying upon machinery, some zillionaire has their body dry frozen and stashed in a lunar south pole crater, with a foundation funding interstellar propulsion research to move the body to the coldest stable points discovered along the way towards the Boomerang Nebula (1° Kelvin) and research to revive back from burnt-crisp state. The foundation incites all sorts of advancements along the way like working out practical fusion and ever more exotic energy generation, AGI, gravity manipulation, Drexlerian nanotech, Dyson swarm, star wisps, self-modifying bodies and so on, in its quixotic quest to fulfill its mandate.
- namaria 3y ago
  I kinda wanna write an horror story about people freezing their bodies or heads only to be revived in the future bat shit insane from the excruciating experience of existing for several decades in a sort of limbo...
  - kobalsky 3y ago
    read the jaunt by stephen king
    - namaria 3y ago
      Yeah big influence... I may need to change my idea further before writing anything otherwise it's too close to plagiarism. Black Mirror got away with it tho with the Cookie episode...
ssnistfajen 3y ago
I remember first reading about Herculaneum Papyri more than a decade ago, and pondered about them being read one day. After all, research into virtually unwrapping these scrolls had been ongoing since 2007 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri#Virtual_unrolling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri#Virtual_unr...), but I certainly did not expect it to happen so soon. Exponential technology acceleration once again proves itself true.

This is the coolest thing I've read this year. It reads like science fiction. Who would even imagine it's possible to read text from a 2000 year-old rolled up burnt-crisp paper?

dougmwne 3y ago

It’s a 270 year archaeological and technological culmination. The scrolls were dug up in 1752. It took the collective developments of the Industrial Revolution, the sciences all our engineering and manufacturing prowess to discover, preserve and scan the scrolls. Then the final cherry on top of the current AI revolution that can create inferences and connections that are beyond the human mind to even understand. And out pops 2000 year-old wisdom of the ancients.

bee_rider 3y ago
It is a bit fitting that it turns out the scroll is about the relationship between enjoyment and abundance. It looks like, from what we can gather, the author decides that should something be hard to get, that doesn’t lead to greater enjoyment. But, it seems that the archaeologists have found an awful lot of joy in how “rare” access to these scrolls is!
jfengel 3y ago
One other thing that was required: the patience not to ruin it. So much has been lost to well-meaning archaeologists who dug up and threw away things that they didn't think were important. They tried cleaning and preservation techniques on artifacts without testing, sometimes ruining them in the process. They ripped things out of context, and "restored" them based on guesses that were sometimes flagrantly wrong. Of course they couldn't be expected to know everything that would come in the future, so blame can sometimes perhaps be muted. But it's especially positive that they extricated these particular objects very carefully and just waited for a way to extract information that they could hardly have hoped for.

linsomniac 3y ago

Speaking of "reading like sci-fi", what's that book where they scan an entire library of books, descructively, by feeding them into a "book chipper" like device that chops the books up into little pieces, vacuums those pieces up and scans the pieces as they flow through, reconstructing the original text by putting the scanned results together like so many jigsaw puzzles? It was a subplot of the book, but I can't for the life of me remember what book it was.

prezjordan 3y ago
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1109 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1109 Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (ChatGPT helped with the search)
saled 3y ago
FYI it seems ChatGPT could have answered this for you. > The book you're describing sounds like "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge. In this near-future sci-fi novel, set in 2025, one of the subplots involves a project called the "Library Project," where the UCSD (University of California, San Diego) library decides to digitize its entire collection. The process is somewhat as you described: books are destructively scanned by being shredded into tiny pieces, which are then scanned and digitized, with the text being reconstructed from the scans. This process is a part of the broader themes of the book, which include the effects of technology on society and the concept of "wearable computing" and augmented reality. Vernor Vinge, a retired San Diego State University professor of mathematics, computer scientist, and Hugo Award-winning author, is well-known for his works in the science fiction genre, especially for exploring the concept of the technological singularity.
- gwern 3y ago
  I'm not surprised ChatGPT can answer it - I'm not sure why, but _Rainbows End_ is one of the most commonly-asked about SF books like that. Everyone remembers the book-tornado doing shotgun sequencing, but they can never remember its name or anything else that happens. I guess that's the problem with having a technology whose mental image is so compelling but also mostly disconnected to the rest of the book. (I know I can't tell you much about the rest without rereading the WP entry.)

yourapostasy 3y ago

I’m now wavering a bit on my earlier dismissal of people freezing their bodies for an indeterminate future revival. I could probably get into a science fiction story with this premise: Instead of relying upon machinery, some zillionaire has their body dry frozen and stashed in a lunar south pole crater, with a foundation funding interstellar propulsion research to move the body to the coldest stable points discovered along the way towards the Boomerang Nebula (1° Kelvin) and research to revive back from burnt-crisp state. The foundation incites all sorts of advancements along the way like working out practical fusion and ever more exotic energy generation, AGI, gravity manipulation, Drexlerian nanotech, Dyson swarm, star wisps, self-modifying bodies and so on, in its quixotic quest to fulfill its mandate.

namaria 3y ago
I kinda wanna write an horror story about people freezing their bodies or heads only to be revived in the future bat shit insane from the excruciating experience of existing for several decades in a sort of limbo...
- kobalsky 3y ago
  read the jaunt by stephen king
  - namaria 3y ago
    Yeah big influence... I may need to change my idea further before writing anything otherwise it's too close to plagiarism. Black Mirror got away with it tho with the Cookie episode...

ssnistfajen 3y ago

I remember first reading about Herculaneum Papyri more than a decade ago, and pondered about them being read one day. After all, research into virtually unwrapping these scrolls had been ongoing since 2007 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri#Virtual_unrolling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri#Virtual_unr...), but I certainly did not expect it to happen so soon. Exponential technology acceleration once again proves itself true.