Rosetta Disk Designed For 2,000 Years Archive

Hugh Pickens writes "Kevin Kelly has an interesting post about an archive designed with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years to serve future generations as a modern Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta disk contains analog 'human-readable' scans of scripts, text, and diagrams using nickel deposited on an etched silicon disk and includes 15,000 microetched pages of language documentation in 1,500 different languages, including versions of Genesis 1-3, a universal list of the words common for each language, and pronunciation guides. Produced by the Long Now Foundation, the plan is to replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world in nondescript locations so at least one will survive their 2,000-year lifespan. 'This is one of the most fascinating objects on earth,' says Oliver Wilke. 'If we found one of these things 2,000 years ago, with all the languages of the time, it would be among our most priceless artifacts. I feel a high responsibility for preserving it for future generations.'"

Comments

Well that's embarassing

[bigtallmofo]

Among the 13,500 scanned pages are 1,500 different language versions of Genesis 1-3

I'm sure they picked bible passages because the translations were mostly done for them already but I'm a little embarassed that future generations are going to think how amazingly superstitious we were. I mean, Genesis 2 alone...

Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

They're going to think we were cuckoo!

Re:Well that's embarassing

[vidarh]

Well, "we" (as in mankind as a whole) clearly are amazingly superstitious.

More importantly, though, it's a text that has a reasonable chance of surviving and being updated to remain understandable. Even if religion should start declining rapidly, it's played such a significant role in history and the text has been spread so widely that it's one of very few works I'd be willing to bet will exist in a "modern" translation 2000 years from now - a work that is currently considered a sacred text by more than half of the worlds population (both christians, muslims and jews) has a good shot at longevity.

What other texts do we have that has a similar chance of surviving? There are a lot of texts that are revered to some extent, but few or none that so many people have copies of, and even fewer currently widespread works that the next generation or the one after that will still have many copies of.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[KillerBob]

Because the bible is already translated, and because the bible is more likely to survive 2000 years.

Assume that none of the 1500 languages used still exist 2,000 years from now. It's a fairly safe bet that if there's still humans, there's still going to be religion. And as annoying as it is to admit for some people, Christianity is likely to be one of those religions that survives. That'll give them a translation key for 1,500 languages, which can in turn be used to translate the rest of the information contained on the plates.

A far more likely situation, though, is that several of the languages used will still be in use. Or at least, still readable. That's why the Rosetta stone was so useful: the other two languages on the stone were still known, allowing scholars to realize that they said the same thing and that it was likely that the third, Heiroglyphs, said the same thing. The larger the sample size you have, the better the chance that it'll be useful. Again, however, having the biblical passages present serves as a translation key for the rest of the information contained on the plates. 1,500 pages out of 15,000 isn't that much.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[dubl-u]

If those people choose what economists call "Nash efficiency" as an ideology (what atheists do), improving themselves without conscious regard to others

That's embarrassingly wrong. Do you know any actual atheists?

Let's take the classic ur-atheist, the physical scientist. You're suggesting all of those people are in it for themselves? Because the ones I know could do a lot better than a post-doc's wage. The ones I've asked do it because they want to be involved in an enterprise for the ages. They want to learn and contribute that learning to human understanding. They want to teach, sharing knowledge with young minds. They are atheists, but they are not so much in it for the bucks.

Personally, I'm an atheist and very community-minded. Why? Well really, that's who I am. But if you want me to rationalize it, I'm glad to say that I value life and hope and love, and I want to maximize those things not just for myself, but for everybody, and for the ages. Yes, it's all dust eventually, but so what? Every extra moment of beauty, of joy, of wonder that we make is that much better a universe.

Should have used Harry Potter...

[Joce640k]

It's contemporary, and already translated into almost every language on Earth.

OTOH The Bible is about the only book that wouldn't have earned them a DMCA slapdown affidavit.

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[maztuhblastah]

OTOH The Bible is about the only book that wouldn't have earned them a DMCA slapdown affidavit.

I know you said that partly in jest, but I actually got a little depressed when I gave it some thought. Think of what we could have included: the music that influenced generations, films that invoke anger, sadness, joy, books that literally changed the way that the world thought -- and not one bit of it can be reproduced, all because some assholes wanted to collect a check from an animated mouse.
 
 

We fucked up somewhere.

Re:Pfff

[Joce640k]

Hundreds of millions of people base their lives around those stories.

Sort of.

When you point out the fine print to them, most of those people don't measure up so they're going to hell anyway. Might as well have partied.

Rosetta Archive is a truly a grand achievement.

[upuv]

I gotta say this is something special. Just imagine having a transcript of Roman Senate debates. Pictures of Inca ritual. Blue prints and plans of how they made the monuments of Easter Island. As almost the complete entire collection of current knowledge and experience will fade in all it's current forms, very little of our lives will survive for 2000 years. Only scraps of buildings and monuments will survive. Oops I take that all back. I forgot about Google cache.

Re:Put it into deep space

[TheRaven64]

Space is very big, and finding stuff there is pretty hard. Designing a satellite which can keep transmitting a signal (so that it will actually be found) for two thousand years is not at all easy - solar panels degrade long before this and even radiothermal generators don't last much longer than a hundred years.

Also, part of the purpose of the Long Now Foundation is to make current scientific knowledge available to our descendants in the event of a global catastrophe. By the time they've (re)developed the technology required to retrieve something from space, there isn't a huge amount more we can teach them.

Re:You need a 500x microscope to read it

[BiggerIsBetter]

I would think that it would be some kind of incentive for someone / something to invent a way of reading it. There is already a 6X lens on there. Using that concept, they might reach the 100X mark in a short time period. The better they get, the more they will learn.

One would imagine they'd have included instructions for making said 100x or 750x lenses that were readable with the 6x lens. A form of boot-strapping, if you will.

We're in the minority here

[danaris]

Whether we like it—or agree with it—or not, the Bible is something that is very important to a very large number of people on Earth. Genesis, in particular (and much of the rest of the Old Testament) represents a creation myth believed to lesser or greater extent by 3.8 billion of our 6 billion-odd people (Wikipedia's estimate of the number of believers in Abrahamic religions).

Just because we agnostic or atheist geeks think that such things are embarrassing doesn't make it any less representative of the world we live in.

Dan Aris

Re:Pfff

[zippthorne]

I think some of the classic mythologies were much more fun. Some pantheons had all the drama of a weekly TV show.

Sometimes I think they maybe WERE the weekly "tv drama" and that we've imputed a little too much significance to them because the records happened to survive.