Slashdot Mirror
If You Had Something to Say to Future Generations...?
gauthier-s asks: "KEO is a project that intends to place a geostationary satellite in orbit that will keep our messages for future generations (up to 50k years after our current existence) as a 'souvenir of Humanity'. Everyone is invited to submit his own message to future civilizations, since it costs nothing to do so. It has been said that any message submitted will be included without any censorship. These messages will be stored for the long trip onto glass disc, which will hopefully be readable by whatever future technology exists when it is recovered. Submissions are possible until December 31, 2002, so take the time to think about your message!" If you feel inclined to share, what kind of message would you leave to the future children of Earth?
If you feel inclined to share, what kind of message would you leave to the future children of Earth?
Don't blame me, I voted for Nader.
Wear sunscreen.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Both documents (along with several along similar lines) would probably be a good idea to include along with any individual comments. Especially if you subscribe to Orwell's theories of Big Brother etc and believe the future will be one of totalitarianism. I was worried about how the future descendants would be able to read the messages, but it seems they are including a DVD reader along with the storage (in the form of DVDs, of course!) There's no guarantee, though, that they'd be able to plug it in ;)
Steer clear of Yucca Mountain.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
> If you feel inclined to share, what kind of message would you
> leave to the future children of Earth?
"Always...no, never...forget to check your references."
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates, 1981
Downmix - The Artscene News Source!
To the children of the far future.
If you have invented time travel and are ever around my area/time can I catch a lift?
>
Have they invented tri-breasted women yet? Like in Total Recall? 4 would be cool too.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
"MESSAGE TO FUTURE GENERATIONS" LICENSE
ATTENTION: Please read carefully before opening this geostationary satellite. The individual or entity opening this satellite (the "future generation") agrees to be bound by the terms of this license. If you open this satellite and do not agree to the terms of this license, do not use the glass disc contained within and promptly return the satellite unopened to its geosynchronous orbit.
Would it be cool to get "First Post!" on the Disk?
They will never listen to us. Even if we gave them the most insightful advice possible, they wouldn't follow it. Look at the bible! Does anyone actually care about what's in it? Most "Christians" never even read it, let alone understand it. And yet it could similarly be regarded as advice for future generations. And if we could ever somehow follow the gist of it strictly, as in, love your neighbour, live in peace and harmony, do not kill steal or covet etc. then we would have sort of a utopian, idyllic society. But who cares about the bible or any other religious text? It's only created rivalry between people of different religions, and generated the majority of all wars ever fought. Whatever you tell someone, you'll be lucky if they listen to it. People never learn anything except from their own experience. You may try time and time again to teach them how to properly live their lives, but it would take genetic manipulation to get people to actually learn from each other instead of learning from trial and error. If people would only learn from their elders, we would all have ceased bickering amongst ourselves a long, long time ago, after the first wars were fought.
Just look at spain and morocco. They're getting close to a war over some stupid deserted islands that no one ever heard about.Morocco just invaded one of them, and there's nothing there but rocks and sand, what's the point?
You might as well send them "frosty piss" and "AYB" messages. They'll shit on them.
Sell microsoft short.
-Sean
Be excellent to each other.
c-hack.com |
A good place to start would be to include whatever was on the Voyager spacecraft.
I wonder why they picked 50,000 years. I mean, you might as well say 80 gadzillion years. Why not just say "we'll do our best to make it last forever?"
c-hack.com |
1. [whisper] Cover for me.
2. Oooo, good idea, boss!
3. It was like that when I got here.
--Homer
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
History satellite go boom. Bye bye, non-state-sanctioned history.
I'm the stranger...posting to
is roughly three lines long. If I conclude my message with the source code and explain it's applicability to future generations, will the satellite then become a circumvention device?
All the crap flooders will fill the poor satelite with *BSD is dying posts - the funny thing is that the life forms that will read the disk will probably be *BSD based sentient AI systems.
Poor things won't know what to make of the ASCII goastse.cx posts though.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Let's put the whole Slashdot message archive on that DVD. After all, it's the stuff that matters.
And:
There is no sex in the Champagne Room.
Oh, there's *champagne* in the Champagne Room; but you don't want champagne, you want sex...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I'm allowed, once in a while, aren't I?
But 50,000 years seems a bit too long.
Why?
The assumption is that our technology will continue to advance the farther we travel into the future.
But, consider _The Time Machine_ by H.G. Wells. When the main character traveled far enough into the future, eventually we reversed this trend, evolved into two separate species, and ran around in happiness about all the fruit we've found (okay...so its been a while since I read the book).
And I think Wells has this point right on. Look around us, people. If you haven't noticed, the renaissance is over. We've already passed our Great Enlightenment. And we've already passed our technological maturity.
Scientists already think that we pretty much know most of what there is to know (I read this somewhere, not sure where). Even if you're a programmer, what else is new or interesting to program? (I am seriously curious about this, but probably off-topic)
At what point does going to school mean learning that any new idea you have has already been discoved and written about in depth?
And at what point are we running around naked, glad at being so happy eating our yummy fruit, completely oblivious about the messages contained in a dark satellite, silently circling around the earth?
By the time you read this, the copyright to Mickey Mouse should have just expired.
I'd send ASCII copies of all the great works of art. both in black and white and in color. What's great about ASCII is it's huge compression rate. You could fit all of them into the space of a good sized/quality jpg file.
Here's an example:Mona Lisa
and one in color... html coloring.
Some dog
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
There is a great SF story by Gregory Benford
Spoiler Warning
Don't read on if you think you want to read the story. The following spoils it a bit. However, it is essential to illustrate my point.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The story is about retrieving information from pottery. The idea is to restore the sounds that were around when people were making pottery centuries ago. I read somewhere that this was based on actual serious research.
Anyhow, the scientists succeed, but are disappointed by what they can retrieve: middle-agers shouting warnings into the pot not to walk on this and this guy's land, because the sheep will get sick, and other nonsense like that.
At the same time some other scientists are preparing a time capsule for the benefit of future generations. The conclusion of the story is: "what makes us think we are doing a better job than the people from the middle ages?"
I guess the same applies here: even if we would filter out all the crap ("l33t hax0rz in sp33z!"), are people really going to give a damn in 50K years?
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
"We, too, thought we were intelligent. We mistook data for wisdom."
50,000 years was chosen because in that amount of time, it's almost guaranteed that every glass disc on the satellite will be shattered by the billions of micrometeors that will most likely be perforating the hull of the sattellite on a continual basis after they sufficiently weaken the skin in a couple hundred years.
/really/ have to hear whatever inane shit the humans of today decide might be cute to say and have put in orbit.
That way, the people of the future don't
How about WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE, preferably in the form of giant flaming letters.
They told us it was fixed!
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
It's better to pissed off then pissed on!
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
"Sorry. We thought it was a good idea."
;)
That should pretty much cover everything.
"If you can read this you've done better than I could have hoped." I mean, seriously, what are the chances of something like this being readable in even 50 years?
...The physicists thought they had their knowledge of the universe pretty much down pat.
I'm the stranger...posting to
"He, O' Men, is wisest who, like Socrates, knows his wisdom has no value."
-- Socrates
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
"Hi, I send you this in order to have you advice..."
DON'T PANIC!
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
If you are hearing this message, this craft was not destroyed in a collison with near Earth asteriods. And now a word from our sponsor Coca-cola.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.