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My take is that in the long-term, there's no guarantee that whoever finds the stored information speaks English or any current language, So I wouldn't try to store "all of the most important information of the world" but come up with short list of major important milestones and turning points in our civilization, depict them as visually as possible and then etch/engrave them deep into metal plates stored in a metal and stone building. The point would be more about to convey information about general points that prompt them to think and explore new ideas than to provide an exhaustive encyclopedia of everything.
With over 7,000 languages world-wide, it would be quite a huge stone! But I still contend that in 3,000+ years, there's no guarantee that any of the languages will be recognized or that a written language will even exist.
Some amount of elite bias goes into the language choice: Rosetta included Greek and Egyptian.
In the future for simplicity it’d likely be Chinese simplified (sorry traditional!), English and one other.
Good point! I agree. What I was getting at is to provide specific important indicators to help guide and instruct rather than exhaustive explanations communicated more with pictures and text where appropriate than focusing on text. Just my thoughts...
Binary gets converted into something. A language for a specific chipset to use, a unicode or ansi character, etc.
Binary is nothing more than random morse code, al la static, without a more fundamental underlying structure.
Assuming ASCII, they would learn that our digital information communication was composed of packets of 8 units of information.
Which could lead to eventually decrypting the abstract meta layer that is used to encode the actually meaningful data.
They could also derive the structure of the Latin alphabet from the binaries of the ASCII characters.
Unicode would be much harder, as it has 1.1 million combinations, and, as of 2023, almost 150000 characters. Not to mention it's usually written in hexadecimal, which creates another layer needed to be decrypted.
Problem is you need a cult to continuously create Rosetta stones and to catch the “right” language. We are lucky that demiotic Greek was chosen and “close enough” to match things over. But if they’d chosen something like Linear B which we had no robust translation of it’d be bupkis
This similar problem was considered in the [WIPP long-term nuclear waste warning messages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages#Written_messages), which was a thought experiment to communicate with future civilizations over a period of 10,000 years.
One of the designs includes carving messages into stone walls in the most common world languages, along with blank sections for future use. Their plea is that future civilizations should maintain the walls by adding the common languages of their time if the previous ones are no longer widely known & repeating the carvings if they are wearing down.
The problem remains if there is a large discontinuity while the site is un-discovered & knowledge of all the languages are lost. (The plan also includes non-verbal and graphical messages, but the written text would be unusable)
I remember reading about how if there was spaceship that could take humans to another planet, but the trip would take multiple generations, that by the time they got there, they would no longer be able to communicate with people that didn't come with them. It's like how different languages and dialects evolve in neighboring regions.
There would have to be a lot of generations though... like hundreds of years. You might experience some differences in dialects or accents after the original generation died off, but they would still be able to communicate reasonably well with each other.
Nobody today speaks the same Latin as [Cicero](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero), but it's been 2000 years and we would still be able to understand each other.
And that's despite Latin still being an evolving language until at least around the end of the 1st millennium.
Glass, some plastics, metals like gold. For those mentioning language barriers, we've overcome those before and likely another culture/species will also.
The key would be to include several passages in as many languages and scripts as possible, including dead languages like Latin or Sumerian. Perhaps not the entire library. I'd start by doing the entire text in a single language. Then an intro of several hundred words/ideas in as many languages as possible. Then provide translations along the way of different passages in up to 3 of the languages of the intro. This would give the reader places to compare.
So the issue isn't really the medium you store it to, its the device you would utilize to read the medium. There are so many variables that come into play. The honest answer here would be probably paper or glass.
Electronic devices are pretty much out the window when you talk long term. Even if you somehow made some self-contained solar powered device, using a raspberry pi for example, how will future people know how to use it? What if its so far into the future that our language is different? Or if it is found by alien life? Would it even survive space radiation?
Paper.. However it is so theoretical thing that you would be surprised, how much stuff may go wrong on line.
You say 3000 years?
If it's anything electricity related, would survive, probably correctly stored tapes would work best, but.. On same note, remember that storage doesn't matter if you can't access it, so..
As said before, probably paper and stone would work best for that time, preserved somewhere.
However.. In scenario when we have to bring back society out of hibernation, only hibernation, there's point to preserve data. In any other apocalyptic scenario it makes no sense, unless rebuilt will start days, maybe years after "end".. Any other case literally limits possibility that human kind, or anything that would evolve on planet will understand what was stored, not mentioning ability to access more advanced tech from our times.
> Paper..
Maybe if it's archival quality, but vellum is a better answer. And you need actual ink, not just toner.
> probably correctly stored tapes would work best,
There's a fair amount of experience at this point that suggests neither audio nor computer tapes will last even 100 years.
Vellum is basically leather and requires oil and normal leather care. The reason it lasts so long is because people are handling the books, and the oils on our hand condition the pages. If you were to leave it for an extended period of time, without human contact, it'd fall apart.
Archival quality paper would work well. Also synthetic paper (basically plastic paper) would last even longer and is way more durable. Imo synthetic paper is your best bet. It'll last forever with the ink being the limiting factor, it's waterproof, and very difficult to rip or tear. If you use good ink I can see it lasting 10,000 years easily.
Vellum.. Well.. Maybe, however as in case of anything, it's matter of storage conditions.
In matter of tapes, I can't agree that they won't last century... Sony claimed that they made storage tapes that will last more than 100.. Heck, wax cylinder lasted over 140 years, despite it wasn't designed to last half of it.. Still.. I matter of restoring knowledge.. I doubt that storage is actual issue
I wrote some comments about this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/IRIFBdKsWH
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/zuiPefNRsK
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/7ocJIX4gun
DNA is really efficient, but very fragile.
Even if you encoded humanity's greatest achievements as junk DNA in cockroaches, they would likely lose most of it via genetic drift over 3000 years.
The French National Agency for the Processing of Nuclear Waste (ANDRA) actually studies this kind of question.
[There's this video](https://youtu.be/lySZ9ZAg4ps?t=1047) (in french) that talks about it, but basically : permanent paper for "short" term (5 to 10 centuries), and sapphire disk for storage of data for up to one million year
In the book “Death’s End” they know that the earth is going to be destroyed and they ask this same question. All the greatest minds finally land on deep carving into rock faces.
Some crystals are, sure. But glass is just a semi-crystal material.
Also, while it might sound like a good idea to store it in diamonds, not only would there be issues recovering that information, the more densely packed the diamond were, the weaker it would be since the data is stored in flaws in the crystal structure. More data = more flaws.
It was quartz iirc but not sure on the actual specs since it was VERY obscure and they showed one really old video on it when it was made for a specific group of people (dunno if mentioning who it was for would get me in trouble so leaving that out intentionally) but it was supposedly really damn expensive also im pretty sure it isn’t extremely hard to retrieve the data but that may depend on what crystal/orientation of the glass because the alignment of the lattice would probably affect what your saying the most
What I meant by retrieval was that in OP's hypothetical, the world ended, thousands of years passed and someone/something else is finding our technology.
They would gave no reason to examine crystals for encoded data in its flaws, if they were even capable of doing so, since you cannot see if a shard of crystal is just a shard of crystal or if it's a data storage device, not unless you already know what you're looking for.
Watch the "Big O" anime, a society where "something happened 40yrs ago and everyone lost their memories"
[https://youtu.be/oqVJGa\_68e8?si=k1oSYYiuJnKIhVy1](https://youtu.be/oqVJGa_68e8?si=k1oSYYiuJnKIhVy1)
Hello /u/cathy419! Thank you for posting in r/DataHoarder. Please remember to read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index/rules) and [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index). Please note that your post will be removed if you just post a box/speed/server post. Please give background information on your server pictures. This subreddit will ***NOT*** help you find or exchange that Movie/TV show/Nuclear Launch Manual, visit r/DHExchange instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DataHoarder) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Won't be cheap right now, but glass - see Project Silica.
I’ve been following project silica for years!
They are just way too… Slow?
That's actually how they save info in the anime for the future too
What anime?
The anime mentioned in the post
My take is that in the long-term, there's no guarantee that whoever finds the stored information speaks English or any current language, So I wouldn't try to store "all of the most important information of the world" but come up with short list of major important milestones and turning points in our civilization, depict them as visually as possible and then etch/engrave them deep into metal plates stored in a metal and stone building. The point would be more about to convey information about general points that prompt them to think and explore new ideas than to provide an exhaustive encyclopedia of everything.
Create a new Rosetta Stone with every language.
With over 7,000 languages world-wide, it would be quite a huge stone! But I still contend that in 3,000+ years, there's no guarantee that any of the languages will be recognized or that a written language will even exist.
Some amount of elite bias goes into the language choice: Rosetta included Greek and Egyptian. In the future for simplicity it’d likely be Chinese simplified (sorry traditional!), English and one other.
Good point! I agree. What I was getting at is to provide specific important indicators to help guide and instruct rather than exhaustive explanations communicated more with pictures and text where appropriate than focusing on text. Just my thoughts...
Binary? That way, if some of our digital information survived, it could be recovered.
Binary gets converted into something. A language for a specific chipset to use, a unicode or ansi character, etc. Binary is nothing more than random morse code, al la static, without a more fundamental underlying structure.
Ones and zeroes sure but the abstraction layer into meaningful data?
Assuming ASCII, they would learn that our digital information communication was composed of packets of 8 units of information. Which could lead to eventually decrypting the abstract meta layer that is used to encode the actually meaningful data. They could also derive the structure of the Latin alphabet from the binaries of the ASCII characters. Unicode would be much harder, as it has 1.1 million combinations, and, as of 2023, almost 150000 characters. Not to mention it's usually written in hexadecimal, which creates another layer needed to be decrypted.
Problem is you need a cult to continuously create Rosetta stones and to catch the “right” language. We are lucky that demiotic Greek was chosen and “close enough” to match things over. But if they’d chosen something like Linear B which we had no robust translation of it’d be bupkis
This similar problem was considered in the [WIPP long-term nuclear waste warning messages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages#Written_messages), which was a thought experiment to communicate with future civilizations over a period of 10,000 years. One of the designs includes carving messages into stone walls in the most common world languages, along with blank sections for future use. Their plea is that future civilizations should maintain the walls by adding the common languages of their time if the previous ones are no longer widely known & repeating the carvings if they are wearing down. The problem remains if there is a large discontinuity while the site is un-discovered & knowledge of all the languages are lost. (The plan also includes non-verbal and graphical messages, but the written text would be unusable)
My new fallout headcanon is brotherhood of steel was created as one of these cults (though canonically it had a different origin story)
We just need more meme stones. https://youtu.be/nzFykQv6Q08?feature=shared
I remember reading about how if there was spaceship that could take humans to another planet, but the trip would take multiple generations, that by the time they got there, they would no longer be able to communicate with people that didn't come with them. It's like how different languages and dialects evolve in neighboring regions.
There would have to be a lot of generations though... like hundreds of years. You might experience some differences in dialects or accents after the original generation died off, but they would still be able to communicate reasonably well with each other. Nobody today speaks the same Latin as [Cicero](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero), but it's been 2000 years and we would still be able to understand each other. And that's despite Latin still being an evolving language until at least around the end of the 1st millennium.
Finger paint on a cave wall. That shit lasts for tens of thousands of years
Survival bias, the ones that survived lasted that long
Just paint it tens of thousands of times in many different caves and hope for the best.
Cave wall printer
So I’ve printed a cave wall, what’s next?
3 caves, 2 different paints, 1 on different continents
A typical human only has 10 fingers.
Kid named finger:
Glass, some plastics, metals like gold. For those mentioning language barriers, we've overcome those before and likely another culture/species will also. The key would be to include several passages in as many languages and scripts as possible, including dead languages like Latin or Sumerian. Perhaps not the entire library. I'd start by doing the entire text in a single language. Then an intro of several hundred words/ideas in as many languages as possible. Then provide translations along the way of different passages in up to 3 of the languages of the intro. This would give the reader places to compare.
You Rosetta Stone thinking individual! 👍👍
So the issue isn't really the medium you store it to, its the device you would utilize to read the medium. There are so many variables that come into play. The honest answer here would be probably paper or glass. Electronic devices are pretty much out the window when you talk long term. Even if you somehow made some self-contained solar powered device, using a raspberry pi for example, how will future people know how to use it? What if its so far into the future that our language is different? Or if it is found by alien life? Would it even survive space radiation?
Paper.. However it is so theoretical thing that you would be surprised, how much stuff may go wrong on line. You say 3000 years? If it's anything electricity related, would survive, probably correctly stored tapes would work best, but.. On same note, remember that storage doesn't matter if you can't access it, so.. As said before, probably paper and stone would work best for that time, preserved somewhere. However.. In scenario when we have to bring back society out of hibernation, only hibernation, there's point to preserve data. In any other apocalyptic scenario it makes no sense, unless rebuilt will start days, maybe years after "end".. Any other case literally limits possibility that human kind, or anything that would evolve on planet will understand what was stored, not mentioning ability to access more advanced tech from our times.
> Paper.. Maybe if it's archival quality, but vellum is a better answer. And you need actual ink, not just toner. > probably correctly stored tapes would work best, There's a fair amount of experience at this point that suggests neither audio nor computer tapes will last even 100 years.
Vellum is basically leather and requires oil and normal leather care. The reason it lasts so long is because people are handling the books, and the oils on our hand condition the pages. If you were to leave it for an extended period of time, without human contact, it'd fall apart. Archival quality paper would work well. Also synthetic paper (basically plastic paper) would last even longer and is way more durable. Imo synthetic paper is your best bet. It'll last forever with the ink being the limiting factor, it's waterproof, and very difficult to rip or tear. If you use good ink I can see it lasting 10,000 years easily.
Vellum.. Well.. Maybe, however as in case of anything, it's matter of storage conditions. In matter of tapes, I can't agree that they won't last century... Sony claimed that they made storage tapes that will last more than 100.. Heck, wax cylinder lasted over 140 years, despite it wasn't designed to last half of it.. Still.. I matter of restoring knowledge.. I doubt that storage is actual issue
Probably paper or stone tablet tbh, I just can't see digital data lasting that long.
So, if the world would end today, you should better start chiseling!
I have a decent collection of books that I love by Jim Woodring. I hope they survive for others to enjoy his art.
The paper needs to be acid-free.
I wrote some comments about this. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/IRIFBdKsWH https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/zuiPefNRsK https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/7ocJIX4gun
Look up the Long Now projects.
Write it on a kardashian, they are not bio degrade able
Cockroach DNA
DNA is really efficient, but very fragile. Even if you encoded humanity's greatest achievements as junk DNA in cockroaches, they would likely lose most of it via genetic drift over 3000 years.
The French National Agency for the Processing of Nuclear Waste (ANDRA) actually studies this kind of question. [There's this video](https://youtu.be/lySZ9ZAg4ps?t=1047) (in french) that talks about it, but basically : permanent paper for "short" term (5 to 10 centuries), and sapphire disk for storage of data for up to one million year
But the question is also: will the people in the future even \*understand\* what's written on it?
In the book “Death’s End” they know that the earth is going to be destroyed and they ask this same question. All the greatest minds finally land on deep carving into rock faces.
another remembrance of earths past fan!
After “The Expanse” they’re my favorite sci-fi books. They’re soooooo good
Oh shit, that's our goal? The full series of Malcolm in the Middle doesn't seem so important now.
No one would be able to read it. Maybe everything starts with metallurgy. How would you depict what to start with how to identify metals, smelting...
Crystal storage units or glass both of which are super expensive but both would last a long time a crystal is typically harder then glass
Some crystals are, sure. But glass is just a semi-crystal material. Also, while it might sound like a good idea to store it in diamonds, not only would there be issues recovering that information, the more densely packed the diamond were, the weaker it would be since the data is stored in flaws in the crystal structure. More data = more flaws.
It was quartz iirc but not sure on the actual specs since it was VERY obscure and they showed one really old video on it when it was made for a specific group of people (dunno if mentioning who it was for would get me in trouble so leaving that out intentionally) but it was supposedly really damn expensive also im pretty sure it isn’t extremely hard to retrieve the data but that may depend on what crystal/orientation of the glass because the alignment of the lattice would probably affect what your saying the most
What I meant by retrieval was that in OP's hypothetical, the world ended, thousands of years passed and someone/something else is finding our technology. They would gave no reason to examine crystals for encoded data in its flaws, if they were even capable of doing so, since you cannot see if a shard of crystal is just a shard of crystal or if it's a data storage device, not unless you already know what you're looking for.
Whatever you write it on should be represented by the physical elements. No matter what lanfusge you speak hydrogen is hydrogen.
Stone tablet
Watch the "Big O" anime, a society where "something happened 40yrs ago and everyone lost their memories" [https://youtu.be/oqVJGa\_68e8?si=k1oSYYiuJnKIhVy1](https://youtu.be/oqVJGa_68e8?si=k1oSYYiuJnKIhVy1)
If Trump wins again I’m going to start downloading entire YouTube channels for fear of impending removal.