It takes time to make paper, it takes time to make ink. It takes time to make nand gates and flash storage. It takes time to write things down, it takes time to

It takes time to make paper, it takes time to make ink. It takes time to make nand gates and flash storage. It takes time to write things down, it takes time to impose a patter of electrostatic charge onto a substrate. Call this t_make. It takes time for paper and ink to decay. It takes time for charges to leak. It takes time for PGA packages to deteriorate. Call this t_decay. In general, t_make << t_decay even for paper, and with electronic information, it's more profound. A really good number is this ratio, which in this case, t_make/t_decay is roughly 1/300 (assumes this project will take a year, which is probably high). For electronic backup, I'd imagine it's more like 1/10^6 or so. That said, some human effort is needed to keep information alive over long period of time. But it's only t_make effort every t_decay period, which actually isn't a lot, on it's face. It's an interesting question though what the maximum amount of data humanity can keep alive given a certain level of economic output. E.g. if you make 10^7 hard drives a year that store 10^12 bits and they each last 10 years, then you can store 10^20 bits indefinitely. (10^7 hard drives x 10 years x 10^12 bits).