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KEO Time Capsule To Remain In Orbit 'Til 52001 AD
cascino writes: "CNN is reporting that a French organization under the direction of Jean-Marc Philippe [KEO] is planning on launching a time capsule, called the KEO, next year that will contain electronic messages inscribed on CD's from people around the world. So what, you ask? It is planned to remain in orbit until the year 52001." But wouldn't DVDs hold a lot more data? Perhaps they would like my Visa statements. The cool thing is you can send up to 6,000 characters worth of what you think should be on there.
Even if the satellite survives, how do I know my message will?
The CD-ROMs on which the messages will be stored underwent exhaustive testing in July 1998 at the National Grand Accelerator of Heavy Ions (GANIL). The CD-ROMs were exposed to the equivalent of 50,000 years' of cosmic radiation in GANIL's particle accelerator and passed with flying colors. Despite the heavy exposure, the disks remained intact and legible.
How will our distant descendants be able to read our messages?
It's obvious that today's state-of-the-art technology in data storage, the laser reader, will be obsolete and totally forgotten by then. At any rate, it would be impossible to include one in the cargo due to its prohibitive volume and innate fragility. We are therefore currently drafting a "user manual" using simple symbolic images to explain how to construct a CD player so as to be able to access the content of the disks. Like the Rosetta Stone, the information will be represented in such a manner so as to facilitate the task of decryption.
In 52001, the inhabitants of Earth will capture a sattelite and take it to Outpost Headquarters where paleologists will unlock it and find inside small platters of glass....
"Look," they will say, "perfectly preserved glass platters that our ancient ancestors used for record-keeping once! And they're remarkably well preserved!"
Many years are spent, graduate students (if they still exist in 52001) come and go having completed dissertations on the decoding of the Orbital Glass Platters, thousands will wonder what the ancients used to think were important. Eventually they manage to decode some of the Ancient Tounge, with a mere 50,000 words in it, barely enough to fill a single memory cell in one of the millions of cockroachbots that comprise a part of the Human galactic ecosystem.
Once the initial progress is made, it is only a matter of seconds before a fully aware translator is coded, compiled, and executed to start the drudging work of making sense of the Ancient Glass Platters. Word spreads out from Earth through the networks of spaceborne miniroaches via radio, until thousands of years later the full content of the platters spreads throughout the Human galaxy. Our decendents will wonder at the strange and quaint sense of humor of the ancients, who were just beginning the age of mass communication and intelligent robotics.
"What," they will wonder, "is 'first post' supposed to mean?"
The Tyrrany Begins....
Finding God in a Dog