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It seems like there should be a service for the interesting documents to go to historians or something. Then they can take their time going through it to see wh

by j2kun 12y ago

It seems like there should be a service for the interesting documents to go to historians or something. Then they can take their time going through it to see what has historical value and what does not, and make a non-split-second decision.

pavel_lishin 12y ago
I recall a minor plot point of Rainbows End where an entire library was being scanned in by being put through a shredder, and the resulting stream-of-confetti being photographed at a very high frame rate and resolution, to be later stitched back together into a set of coherent documents. If that technology existed and was good enough, it would be an interim solution. Grab the data, pulp the paper.
- nucleardog 12y ago
  Seems like a travel scanner or something attached to the top of a shredder (differing speeds notwithstanding) to image the paper before it got turned into itty bitty pieces would be a little easier. Really, given how cheap and easy it is to store large amounts of information digitally I'm surprised that something like this isn't common for a lot of cases to reduce storage costs. How many businesses have rooms full of accounting records and receipts going back decades that could instead be taking up a bit of space in a rack? Toss a copy in Amazon Glacier for a penny a gigabyte so you have something off-site and call it a day.
j_lev 12y ago
I think the payoff would be too low. It might be more feasible however if it was already in digital format, and there was a searchable place to which a person's entire hard disk could be uploaded with a short description of who/what/when. Add crowdsourcing. Another option would be to auction entire hard disks on Ebay with a description as per the above, not sure if this already exists. Then it's a kind of lottery, with massive potential payload for people willing to go through the data.

by j2kun 12y ago

pavel_lishin 12y ago

I recall a minor plot point of Rainbows End where an entire library was being scanned in by being put through a shredder, and the resulting stream-of-confetti being photographed at a very high frame rate and resolution, to be later stitched back together into a set of coherent documents. If that technology existed and was good enough, it would be an interim solution. Grab the data, pulp the paper.

nucleardog 12y ago
Seems like a travel scanner or something attached to the top of a shredder (differing speeds notwithstanding) to image the paper before it got turned into itty bitty pieces would be a little easier. Really, given how cheap and easy it is to store large amounts of information digitally I'm surprised that something like this isn't common for a lot of cases to reduce storage costs. How many businesses have rooms full of accounting records and receipts going back decades that could instead be taking up a bit of space in a rack? Toss a copy in Amazon Glacier for a penny a gigabyte so you have something off-site and call it a day.

j_lev 12y ago

I think the payoff would be too low. It might be more feasible however if it was already in digital format, and there was a searchable place to which a person's entire hard disk could be uploaded with a short description of who/what/when. Add crowdsourcing. Another option would be to auction entire hard disks on Ebay with a description as per the above, not sure if this already exists. Then it's a kind of lottery, with massive potential payload for people willing to go through the data.