4 ms·

> I'm pretty confident, though, that in another thousand years there will still be ancient data tables "archived" underground in Iraq, while todays' billions of

> I'm pretty confident, though, that in another thousand years there will still be ancient data tables "archived" underground in Iraq, while todays' billions of spreadsheets in digital form and on non-archival paper will have long since disappeared. Probably, but you never know. The Mesopotamians didn’t intend their tablets to last this long, either—but they often got burned in fires, which hardened them so they lasted. So some of our artifacts might get accidentally preserved as well.

ggm 2y ago
"Memoirs found in a bathtub" by Stanislaw Lem. Printouts preserved in mud deep in a fictitious pentagon basement for thousands of years after nuclear holocaust wipes computer memories.
- mcphage 2y ago
  That book is wonderfully unsettling. The ending was perfect.
  - ggm 2y ago
    The star diaries are my favourite, more whimsical. I'm very fond of his robot stories. I've never re-read the Memoirs, they were .. very unsettling. As was the futurological congress. Solaris is too overlayed by the Tarkovsky film for me now, i used to make shredded paper to hang in my office airvents as a homage.
    - psd1 2y ago
      Peace On Earth is my favourite Lem by a long way. The English translation has aged better than Memoirs, too.
TZubiri 2y ago
The older the stuff you read is, the stronger the selection bias. There must be a huge amount of civilizations that were writing on paper or papyrus around that era, but they just didn't survive. The success of purposeful creation of monuments is usually attributed to their size, like pyramids. Turns out making it big is a pretty good strategy if you want something to last and (not loose it). I'm sure in mileniums we will have both purposefully long lasting small and big monuments, as well as unintentional long lasting records.
- micromodel 2y ago
  > There must be a huge amount of civilizations that were writing on paper or papyrus around that era, but they just didn't survive. I don't think this part is true. Papyrus wasn't cheap.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  This is what I don't really understand about modern-day rich / famous people; they'll build big houses and yachts, and some governments even build government seats and palaces which might be preserved for the ages. But it doesn't feel like they're building "monuments" per se. Then again, survivorship / selection bias like you said; we don't yet know what the Wonders of the World built today will be in 2000-4000 years, because we don't know what will remain or what will be considered significant. I mean there's huge skyscrapers, ostentatious buildings built in the richer cities. There's a giant clock in Mecca, the Venetian and Grand Lisboa in Maccau, the New Century Global Complex in China, etc. But few or none built to just exist, like the pyramids that were sealed off. After solving world hunger etc, if I were stupidly rich, I'd have a monument built. Sealed off containing the world's knowledge in redundant and multiple mediums. And with a visitor center / museum because people will be curious, of course.
mncharity 2y ago
> some of our artifacts might get accidentally preserved as well IIRC (not likely these decades later), when recovering old MIT AI Lab backups (9-track tape goes slowly by a read head, yielding bits, plastic backing, and a pile of magnetic dust), one lisp machine backup contained a core dump file, which included the screen buffer. A single moment of someone's long-ago day, with assorted windows, including the cause of the dump. And a bit of graphics fun - a critter crawling across the screen - frozen in time.
runevault 2y ago
What are the odds any electronic data store, tape or SSD or anything in between, could last that long? I guess some random store keeps getting moved from one storage device to another by accident, but beyond that I'm not sure if it is reasonably possible.
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  [dead]
- panstromek 2y ago
  Microsoft is has been developing one for quite some time. Glass structure that should last thousands of years.

ggm 2y ago

"Memoirs found in a bathtub" by Stanislaw Lem. Printouts preserved in mud deep in a fictitious pentagon basement for thousands of years after nuclear holocaust wipes computer memories.

mcphage 2y ago
That book is wonderfully unsettling. The ending was perfect.
- ggm 2y ago
  The star diaries are my favourite, more whimsical. I'm very fond of his robot stories. I've never re-read the Memoirs, they were .. very unsettling. As was the futurological congress. Solaris is too overlayed by the Tarkovsky film for me now, i used to make shredded paper to hang in my office airvents as a homage.
  - psd1 2y ago
    Peace On Earth is my favourite Lem by a long way. The English translation has aged better than Memoirs, too.

TZubiri 2y ago

The older the stuff you read is, the stronger the selection bias. There must be a huge amount of civilizations that were writing on paper or papyrus around that era, but they just didn't survive. The success of purposeful creation of monuments is usually attributed to their size, like pyramids. Turns out making it big is a pretty good strategy if you want something to last and (not loose it). I'm sure in mileniums we will have both purposefully long lasting small and big monuments, as well as unintentional long lasting records.

micromodel 2y ago
> There must be a huge amount of civilizations that were writing on paper or papyrus around that era, but they just didn't survive. I don't think this part is true. Papyrus wasn't cheap.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
This is what I don't really understand about modern-day rich / famous people; they'll build big houses and yachts, and some governments even build government seats and palaces which might be preserved for the ages. But it doesn't feel like they're building "monuments" per se. Then again, survivorship / selection bias like you said; we don't yet know what the Wonders of the World built today will be in 2000-4000 years, because we don't know what will remain or what will be considered significant. I mean there's huge skyscrapers, ostentatious buildings built in the richer cities. There's a giant clock in Mecca, the Venetian and Grand Lisboa in Maccau, the New Century Global Complex in China, etc. But few or none built to just exist, like the pyramids that were sealed off. After solving world hunger etc, if I were stupidly rich, I'd have a monument built. Sealed off containing the world's knowledge in redundant and multiple mediums. And with a visitor center / museum because people will be curious, of course.

mncharity 2y ago

> some of our artifacts might get accidentally preserved as well IIRC (not likely these decades later), when recovering old MIT AI Lab backups (9-track tape goes slowly by a read head, yielding bits, plastic backing, and a pile of magnetic dust), one lisp machine backup contained a core dump file, which included the screen buffer. A single moment of someone's long-ago day, with assorted windows, including the cause of the dump. And a bit of graphics fun - a critter crawling across the screen - frozen in time.

runevault 2y ago

What are the odds any electronic data store, tape or SSD or anything in between, could last that long? I guess some random store keeps getting moved from one storage device to another by accident, but beyond that I'm not sure if it is reasonably possible.

fc417fc802 2y ago
[dead]
panstromek 2y ago
Microsoft is has been developing one for quite some time. Glass structure that should last thousands of years.