I've been thinking about this too, but I believe that Vint Cerf's solution is not feasible. Or, rather, it's a typical technologist "solution" that only prolong

I've been thinking about this too, but I believe that Vint Cerf's solution is not feasible. Or, rather, it's a typical technologist "solution" that only prolongs the problem. Imagine you're an archaeologist in the year 4500 or so, by our calendar. What we know of as modern Western civilization collapsed thousands of years prior, all you have are physical artifacts dug out of the ground in your attempt to reconstruct the history of this lost civilization. What would you see? Circa the late 20th century you'll notice a precipitous decline in the volume of any surviving cultural material--meaning printed books, magazines, business papers of various sorts. You'll find fewer sound recordings, ticket stubs, even purchase receipts. The various detritus of daily life will appear to rapidly dry up and virtually disappear, around the world more or less simultaneously. What conclusion would you make? The population at the time seemed to be stable or growing as measured by ruins of settlements, yet they seemed to be doing less or producing less? Perhaps there was a crisis in education and illiteracy became rampant? Maybe there was an ecological disaster and paper itself became scarce? You see that a huge proportion of our culture that we take for granted--not just pop culture, cat gifs, etc--but substantial business and scientific research information as well would be completely lost to these future historians. On a more trivial level, when was the last time you saw a comprehensive, printed guide to iOS 8 (for example)? You could consider that a significant cultural/artistic artifact from our time, yet how will it be preserved in any meaningful way for future scholars? Anybody interested in these questions might peruse http://www.longnow.org http://www.longnow.org