Wikipedia and the End of Archeology

Andy Updegrove writes "Far too much attention has been paid to whether or not the Wikipedia is accurate enough. The greater significance of the Wikipedia today, and even more for those in the future, is its reality as the most detailed, comprehensive, concise, culturally-sensitive record of how humanity understands itself at any precise moment in time. Moreover, with its multiple language versions, it also demonstrates how different cultures understand the same facts, historical events and trends at the same time. Today, archaeologists are doing digs to understand how people lived only 150 years ago, making guesses based on the random bits and pieces of peoples' lives that they find. In the future, that won't be necessary, as archaeologists are replaced by anthropologists that mine this treasure-trove for data."

Comments

Interesting Theory

[eno2001]

But like evolution, it's ONLY a theory!!! The reality is that we are in a digital dark ages. Much of the important data that we hold dear to us, or that keep society running, or that even keep people alive just to name a few areas is NOT recoverable in any fashion should we have a nuclear catastrophe. All those data tapes, RAIDs, CD-Rs, DVDs, hard drives, you name it... they are NOT human readable like those scraps of information from our ancestors were. The problem we've got right now is that there is too much information to even be able to store in a physical and human readable form. So I have two proposals:

1. Using genetic engineering and/or nanotechnology we ensure that all humans born past a certain point have nanosensors that can read data in any form and process it before feeding it to the brain. Ideally this human augmentation should be completely biological. However, if nanotechnology is necessary it should be purely mechanical in nature to avoid being wiped out by EMP.
2. We find a way to back up snapshots of the molecular structure of the entire space encompassing and deliver those snapshots via encryption (ideally quantum encryption) to remote data storage facilities at multiple points outside of the solar system. Should a disaster occur, automated attendants will simply be triggered to rebuild the solar system from a recent snapshot at pre-designated locations in the universe. A message would then be sent to the appropriate people on the newly reconstructed Earth to alert them of the nature and cause of the recent devastation that befell the original Earth so that if it was a human caused destruction, the causal trajectory may be avoided. If it was natural, the nature of the event would permit the reconstructed Earth managers to make a decision to revert to an earlier copy should the natural event be too close temporally to do anything about.

You'll have to excuse me. My mind is in a different space as I've been practicing Jala Neti the past few days and my mind is expanding.