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

[JohnHegarty]

With the way things are going very soon the Bible will be the only book that's out of copyright....

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

[Junior J. Junior III]

To give an idea of how embarrassing this will be, think of it like this: Bible-thumpers are the old Trekkies.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[inzy]

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

the man pages for emacs?

Re:Well that's embarassing

[uhfdude]

I was going to say pretty much the same thing. What bothers me is how prominent religion is in American society - leaders doing their thing in the name of God, large groups of fundamentalist christian believers picketing funerals of people they deem unworthy... I'm sure many of you can think of lots of examples. I think it's time that religions be demoted to the realm of mythology where they belong. I mean, come on, it's not gospel. (Can't take credit, stole that gospel bit from comedian Dara O'Briain)

Re:Well that's embarassing

[Notquitecajun]

No no NO. The freaks at Westboro are NOT a "large group," and represent ONLY themselves. If you're going to complain about the excesses of religion, find a different example.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[Bazman]

Ooh I just read down a bit further and discovered that yay, it does have it.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[introspekt.i]

No, vi.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[Rogerborg]

That's a ridiculous comparison. The bible is fictional.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[dontPanik]

Well a lot of what we have from ancient Greek culture is religous material, and that shit is wack!
Even so, no one goes around saying the Greeks were idiots.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[Lachlan Hunt]

I agree, it's a shame they had to fill it with it with mythology, instead of something more useful like some sort of documentation of our current scientific knowledge, information about actual significant historical events, or something.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[TedRiot]

Ed is the standard text editor.

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

[Kent Recal]

The problem, as usual, is in the presentation bias.
I got myself a copy of this rosetta thing and well, see for yourself:

.
./1111_README.1ST
./1111_README.1ST/the_bible_-_a_popes_view.avi
./bible
./bible/hot_jesus_action.avi
./bible/maria_sweaty_xxx.wmv
./bible/12_hot_studs_uncensored.avi
./bible2-the-moses-incident
./bible2-the-moses-incident/gawds-bb2mi-TS-PROPER.rar
./bible2-the-moses-incident/gawds-bb2mi-TS-PROPER.r00
./bible2-the-moses-incident/gawds-bb2mi-TS-PROPER.r01
./bible2-the-moses-incident/gawds-bb2mi-TS-PROPER.r02
./bible2-the-moses-incident/gawds-bb2mi-TS-PROPER.r03
..
./bible2-the-moses-incident/gawds-bb2mi-TS-PROPER.r44
./TEH_BIBLE_DIRECTORS_CUT--GAWDS-SCREENER-DVDR-XVID
./TEH_BIBLE_DIRECTORS_CUT/gawds-bdc-dvdrip_1.avi
./TEH_BIBLE_DIRECTORS_CUT/gawds-bdc-dvdrip_2.avi
 
( 1417 lines snipped )
 
./.attic
./.attic/misc
./.attic/misc/old
./.attic/misc/old/test
./.attic/misc/old/test/deutsch
./.attic/misc/old/test/deutsch/human_rihgts.doc~

Sad.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be close. Hard to date such old stuff, but Homer is usually dated from 9th to 6th century BCE, while Genesis was put together around the Babylonian Captivity (5th-4th Century BCE). Their sources are certainly older, as Genesis incorporates material from the Babylonian creation stories as well as older stories but not likely older than 10th century BCE, while Homer is based on oral sources dated at least from the 12th century BCE.

Homer is at least as old as the Bible, and is a lot more neutral, and likely to survive for a long time yet.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[kabocox]

That's a ridiculous comparison. The bible is fictional.

Oh if only it mainly was. The problem is that there is far too much factual info in there and well the fictional/scifi elements get drowned out. I've tried to explain to my wife that of course there are huge chucks of the bible that are very factual. Why? The Jews used it as their history/moral/everything a person needed to know book and it was fairly up to date at the time. So of course all the cities/villages mentioned are likely to have actually existed. I try to explain to her its like if some one or family had been keeping a family history since the founding of the US, well in 2000 in the future they could use that family history to locate the cities/towns that said family lived. That part could be mostly factual, but that still doesn't mean everything in the book is factual. You could have a fictional story happen in a realistic setting and that doesn't make the story factual. Though 2000 years latter, if they find the setting, they may assume parts/pieces of the story are true.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[CrackedButter]

"All power to the engines". - Come on, brush up on your Futurama!

Re:Well that's embarassing

[SilverJets]

That's a ridiculous comparison. The bible is fictional.

Oh if only it mainly was. The problem is that there is far too much factual info in there and well the fictional/scifi elements get drowned out. I've tried to explain to my wife that of course there are huge chucks of the bible that are very factual.

Given everything that is written in the bible, I would hardly describe the inclusion of the names of some towns and cities "huge chunks that are very factual". Everything else is just fantasy.

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.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[SanityInAnarchy]

Everything we know today developed in a society that was utterly permeated by the bible in every nook and cranny.

That's pretty arrogant. Also very wrong.

Plenty of what we know today came from the ancient Greeks, who predated the bible. And there are plenty of nooks in which the bible is not used -- despite your attempts to turn this country into a stealth theocracy, most of us still embrace the separation of church and state, and other religions do exist.

Everything you are - your clothes, your food (clothes don't grow in the stores), your car, your very thoughts come from others, with a tiny drop of personal impact from yourself.

I don't own a car, first of all.

And I take responsibility for all of it, whatever my own influence is. I am aware enough to be able to make my own choices -- so if these things come from others, they come with my endorsement.

If those people choose what economists call "Nash efficiency" as an ideology (what atheists do),

It would help if you cited something specific -- all I can find on Nash Efficiency tells me it's a chunk of math, not an ideology.

improving themselves without conscious regard to others (e.g. "piracy is not a crime")

And as an atheist, I can tell you that you're dead wrong about that. What gave you the idea that atheists don't have conscious regard to others?

For that matter, ask a pirate -- I don't think any will try to say it's not a crime. They might occasionally remind you that it's not piracy -- piracy is armed robbery on the high seas; this is copyright infringement -- and they might say that it's not immoral, or that copyright law needs to change.

But I don't think anyone will claim it isn't a crime.

However, if everyone around you (example ... your current employer and any other possible employer) behaved atheistically, improving primarily themselves without regard to others, you'd be out of a job,

Unlikely. My current employer likes me as a person, and has more work than he can do himself, so there is plenty that I can do.

What part of that requires belief in a mythical sky-god?

(even the food would disappear from the local supermarket, as it will be more in the personal intrest of the owner to simply keep it himself). You'd die (even if you are said owner, because deliveries would stop).

Disregarding for the moment your misguided assumptions about atheism, consider that owner -- as you said, deliveries would stop.

So, even if the owner was the most horrible person imaginable, and didn't care at all about anyone but himself, he would keep selling food to you, because that way, deliveries continue -- and also, that way, he gets money to spend on some things he wants other than food.

Before the vandals and visigoths started their massive immigration into the Roman Empire, life expectancy for a slave was around 60 years (this is 300-400 B.C. we're talking about). Once Rome fell, life expectancy of a king dropped to 30 years, and most people didn't live long enough to have children (life expectancy : about 10-15 years). That's what "bread and games" ultimately achieved.

What's your evidence that "bread and games" was responsible for this, assuming the rest of your statistics are accurate?

If you follow the Christian credo, and give to others (that are preferentially also Christians) without expecting anything in return,

If you do that, you're a hypocrite -- you're giving to others and expecting faith in return.

Why are they preferentially also Christians?

And for what it's worth, what was included on the Rosetta Disk was the first few chapters of Genesis, which have absolutely nothing to do with "giving to others"

Re:Well that's embarassing

[clonan]

Actually, with the exception of specific conversations between two people, the bible has proven to be almost perfectly accurate.

Archeology, third party histories and other evidence pretty much always proves that the larger events and geographies are accurate.

-There are egyptian writtings that confirm the plagues.
-Sodom and Gramorrah have been found and were both destroyed at the same time, having burnt down.
-There is more third party documentation as to the life and crusifiction of Christ than there is for the life and death of Julius Ceaser.
-Paul's exploits were well documented
-the dead sea scrolls showend minimal historical drift in the text

The list goes on and on.

There are very few sections of the bible that are presented as fact when they may be religious allegory..the genesis story and Revelation are the big ones. Most other places the extraordinary occurances are events that DO happen (ie the plagues of Egypt) or are presented in dreams. But what I find so interesting about Genesis is that it actually does follow our current understanding of the creation of the universe, our solar system and the earth-moon system. I could easily beleive that a stone age man "receiving" an image of how the universe began would come up with a Genisis story from what he saw.

The astonding accuracy is a result of the honor placed on the document. Most of the old testement was kept in the Ark and once every 49 years it was taken out and read in public then returned to the Ark until about 60 AD. This archiving maintained the original text without historical drift. Once the new testament was cannonized in the 4th century, it was maintained equally zealously. Monks studies for years to be allowed to hand copy the bible and do so with such expertise that it was impossible to tell the original from the copy.

The reason conversations are necessarily excluded for the statment of accuracy is simply because there is usually no way to confirm or deny them. We only have Moses's word that a bush appeared to be on fire and talked with him. However we can reasonably assume that the text in the bible is the same text that was written 1,800 years ago.

You really should actually read the bible. It is a remarkably good read and provides real insight into that part of history, human psycology not to mention religious theory.

Re:Well that's embarassing

[dubl-u]

You go on to admit that atheism is in fact in disagreement with you

No. No, I don't.

What I'm "admitting" is that your (erroneous) expectations don't match my actual views. Dreaming your dreams of a Santa Claus in the sky, the impermanence of the physical world scares you.

It does not scare me. That nothing lasts takes none of the fun out of making something good. If anything, it makes it more poignant, more beautiful. If you don't believe me, go experience some of the art of people like Andy Goldsworthy, who make some works intentionally impermanent.

Again we will see less moral incentive determining their actions. The cracks will be wider.

This is a fine argument from theory, with no actual data. You, some random guy, on the Internet, "guarantee" your argument. So?

History shows that you are wrong. Buddhism started out as a godless venture, accepting the eternal flux we live in, and the Zen Buddhists carry that atheism through today. Have they turned evil? Go meet some and let me know what you think, but I'd say they're doing fine.

Science also suggests you are wrong. At least some and probably much of the human moral sense is provably an innate biological function. For readable introductions, see "Good Natured" by Franz de Waal or "Demonic Males" by Richard Wrangham. And in the decade since those books came out, there's been a heap of good experimental and fMRI observational work, reinforcing the biological basis of community-oriented behavior. And let's not forget "The Forest People," showing that non-Christan societies can develop strong community-oriented behavior.

Your theory that the only source of morality is Christian memes is provably false. And the data about crime and atheism proves the opposite of your notion as well. Atheists are circa 10% of America's population, are circa 0.2% of the prison population. Japan, the least Christian country in the G8, has the lowest violent crime rate. America, the most Christian country, has the highest.

You're really just repeating and embroidering the kind of ignorant statements that Christians make about atheists all the time.

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:Should have used Harry Potter...

[Roger W Moore]

...and how would that show we are not superstitious? Can you imagine what sort of picture a future archaeologist would paint of our society using Harry Potter as a basis? Mind you the "historical" re-enactments would be fun to watch.

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[Chees0rz]

Yeah, we allowed idiots acess to the internet.

Or are you you arrogant and ignorant as to believe the only things that have so influenced mankind have only been produced within the last century?

Oops, did somebody shit in your cereal this morning?

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[deanlandolt]

Or are you you arrogant and ignorant as to believe the only things that have so influenced mankind have only been produced within the last century?

That's completely beside the point. Or are you you arrogant and ignorant as to believe those things which have so influenced mankind within the last century will ever find their way into the public domain, what with the ever-increasing length of copyright terms?

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Tons of it can be reproduced - because it is in the public domain due to it's copyright having expired.

And tons more cannot, because it's not in the public domain, due to said animated mouse.

Or are you you arrogant and ignorant as to believe the only things that have so influenced mankind have only been produced within the last century?

Except this is supposed to be a time capsule showing the world the way it is today, not the way it was a hundred years ago. And there is so much we could be showing them, were it not locked down by copyright.

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[cliffski]

nonsense. You do realise it is up to the copyright holder what permissions they grant right?
Not all copyright holders are cackling billionaire bastards.

As an experiment pick a dozen living writers, email them and ask them if any of them object to granting permission for their books to be published on this project. I'd be amazed if every single one of them didn't say "hell yes".

Don't tarnish the 99% of sane copyright holders with the stupidity of the noisy 1%.

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[tgd]

Nice rant.

Really, one would've thought the reason music and film wasn't included is because... well, you can't listen to sounds or watch movies on an etched nickel disk through a 1000x microscope.

But DMCA rants are a sure path to karma here, no matter how irrelevant to the discussion they are.

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[X0563511]

Sorry. I get confused in the morning sometimes, I guess I found my way into his kitchen by mistake.

I'll try to avoid further kitchen-defecation.

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[NeoSkandranon]

I'm sure plenty of writers would be right onboard with the idea.

Convincing their publishers to allow it might be a little more difficult.

Re:Should have used Harry Potter...

[Repossessed]

Uh, it has nothing to do with showing the world as it is today, its meant to provide references for creating language translations. The bible got picked partly because its likely that a translation of genesis will still exist in thousands of years (even if only as a textbook in an ancient myths course).

I'm glad to see this project finally nearing completion though, and I hope the tech behind it will be expanded for storing more information than just the languages.

Put it into deep space

[mbone]

This would be a logical thing to put into deep space - on the Moon or on Mars, say. It is a good environment to preserve things, and any future civilization is going to look up our space probes sooner or later.

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:Put it into deep space

[Petrushka]

For something that's actually intended to be an archive, perhaps. But this is expressly designed to be merely a curiosity, not an archive. So why bother going to the tremendous effort of sending it to a different planet?

The information that interests the archaeologists is, more often than not, the information that no one is particularly interested in preserving. Things like records of lawsuits, records of amounts of produce, textbooks used for education ... that kind of thing. Sure, mythological documents are interesting too, but they're likely to be preserved in multiple copies anyway.

Hence, Petrushka's Made-up-on-the-spot Rule One: The documents that a society most wants to preserve are exactly those documents that archaeologists will be the least interested in. Because they know that stuff already. (Sure, there are exceptions for truly ancient civilisations where literally nothing else survives except for official documents, but ...)

Re:Put it into deep space

[bytesex]

That's why you would hide it in an intuitive place. In the middle of the biggest crater on the moon, for example, inside a big, obviously artificial thing. A black monolith, say.

Pfff

[SmallFurryCreature]

It has been two thousand years since some girl claimed that she got knocked up by a burning bush rather then her boyfriend and millions of people worship her as a virgin.

One person's cuckoo is another persons prophet. When everyone has forgotten Ron Hubbard was a bad Sci-Fi writer his novels may one day serve as the basis of a religion.

Nah, that could never happen.

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.

Re:Pfff

[strabes]

A major doctrine of Christianity is that no one measures up to the holiness of God anyway, which is why Christ, God incarnate, came and took the sins of the world upon himself. Christianity isn't about being a bunch of holier-than-thou religious people who live in middle class suburbia, go to church once a week, and try not to sin a lot. If you read any one of the four Gospels, those are the types of people which Jesus condemned most frequently (the Pharisees). Christianity is about self-sacrifice, living as Christ lived, and loving as Christ loved. Unfortunately Western Christianity currently looks a lot more like the former than the latter. I'm not asking you to believe it or even find it rational, I'm just asking you to at least give an accurate portrayal of something before you critique it.

Re:Pfff

[hobbit]

Anyone who treats the Bible as anything other than a work of fiction is missing the point of Christ.

Test everything, keep the good...

Try to live your life by Christ's example by all means, but for God's sake [sic] don't actually claim he was the incarnation of a personal deity.

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.

Re:Pfff

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read any one of the four Gospels

4? Oh yeah, that's right - the religious folks have only really bothered to keep around the gospels that suited their purpose. There were dozens of gospels, all from roughly the same era and time. Funny how only certain select ones are accepted.

Re:Pfff

[JeanPaulBob]

It has been two thousand years since some girl claimed that she got knocked up by a burning bush rather then her boyfriend and millions of people worship her as a virgin.

That's got to be one of the silliest critiques of Christianity that I've read. Even setting aside Protestant/Catholic/Orthodox questions of the veneration of Mary.

People don't believe in Jesus because of Mary's claim that God made her pregnant. People believe in Jesus because of claims about his miracles & resurrection.

If you're going to give the pseudoskeptic's treatment to the virgin birth, you're doing it all wrong. You should be doubting whether Mary ever claimed such a thing--you should be speculating that early Christians made up the story.

But I realize that wouldn't make as effective an approach to junk rhetoric.

Hmm... I guess you could throw in some half-informed claims about "mistranslation" of Isaiah 7:14, while you're at it.

Re:Pfff

[Anonymous Coward]

People can call it venerate all they want, but when you offer up a prayer to Mary, that's worshiping.

Re:Pfff

[Bob Uhl]

It has been two thousand years since some girl claimed that she got knocked up by a burning bush rather then her boyfriend and millions of people worship her as a virgin.

And her prospective husband, rather than divorce her as he desired, ate a bad meal, saw a vision and decided to marry her anyway and raise the kid.

And a bunch of fishermen were persuaded by this kid, now-grown, to leave their steady jobs to wander around listening to him preach.

And after he was executed, they decided that rather than head back to fishing that they'd continue the job, annoying the local powers-that-were to the point that they themselves were executed.

Or...the girl was impregnated by God, her son was the Son of God, His miracles actually did convince a bunch of fishermen that He was on to something and so forth.

Which is more difficult to believe? That guys like Saul of Tarsus decided, 'hey, I'm tired of stoning these Christians; I'm gonna become one instead!' or that they he actually received a vision? That ignorant Judean fishermen thought it better to be tortured to death than to enjoy an old age surrounded by their grandchildren, or that they actually believed what they preached first-hand knowledge of?

Oh, and no mainstream Christians worship Mary. We venerate her, of course, since she is the Mother of God after all.

Re:Pfff

[Hatta]

People don't believe in Jesus because of Mary's claim that God made her pregnant. People believe in Jesus because of claims about his miracles & resurrection.

Isn't a virgin birth one of those miracles? By casting doubt on that miracle, you cast doubt on Jesus's divinity.

But yes, the most important question to settle is whether a "Jesus" actually ever existed in the first place. There's not much evidence for that assertion outside the Bible.

we did what?

[nimbius]

we invent a hard disk designed for 2000 years of storage and we stick bible stories on it?!

come on, surely we could upload 4chan instead..

You need a 500x microscope to read it

[SmallFurryCreature]

Okay, so they include a 6x glas sphere. How nice, but you need a 500x microscope to read it. The sphere has a large base and it can be opened. Why not include the tool to read the document with the document?

Who is to say that whoever finds it in the future has access to such a powerful microscope? For most of history we haven't.

Nice idea, but geez, think things through, this could be found by the same kind of people who made the original rossate stone. Do you really want them to wait hundreds of years to develop magnifcation good enough to read it?

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.

Re:You need a 500x microscope to read it

[lordofthechia]

Why not include the tool to read the document with the document?

That's how they make their money! It's brilliant! Give away the media for free, then in 2,000 years, sell the 500x microscope "readers" for a *huge* profit! Just make sure the teaser text and critical reviews are readable by the naked eye.

Genesis

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a lot of Phil Collins - three Genesis albums!

Surely a greater variety would have given a broader view of our world! Maybe some Elton John, and Boney M at least!

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:Rosetta Archive is a truly a grand achievement.

[TheRaven64]

Wow, three replies and all of you completely missed my point. Hint: I wasn't talking about translating the contents of the disks.

This is a Rosetta Stone. It's not a repository of all human knowledge, it's a translation aid. It assumes the existence of other, surviving, data from this era. Without this assumption, it is useless, because learning dead languages is only worthwhile if there is something to translate. The Rosetta Stone was not valuable because it contained useful knowledge (it actually contained a very boring passage with very little historical significance) - it was valuable because it contained the same text in three different languages, allowing large numbers of other (previously untranslatable) texts to be translated easily.

Modern printed books are unlikely to survive for 2,000 years because they use cheap paper and ink with a very short lifespan in comparison to older texts. The only thing that is likely to still be around to translate from this era is digital data which have been copied repeatedly over hundreds of different physical media. Some of this may be translated into newer formats and encodings. The rest, if not accessed frequently, will just be copied and copied in backups of backups. Eventually, if future generations do abandon ASCII and unicode, this will just appear to be a binary blob of data.

Consider something like Project Gutenberg. If you had a print-out of this collection then these disks would help you translate it. If you just had a digital copy, then you need this disk and a definition of the character set used. Without these definitions, you have no way (short of cryptanalysis) of translating the binary files into a sequence of character symbols that you can understand.

Archive readability

[Wowsers]

Just so long as they didn't do what the BBC did in the 1980's with the UK's modern "Doomsday Book" history archive project. The archive went on a Laserdisc, and what hardware today can read that format (not the machines on ebay)?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/11/bbc_domesday_project_saved/ or
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/preservation/research/domesday.htm/community.htm

Re:Archive readability

[Teancum]

This disc is being designed to be read through analog processes.... and in fact the first few words can be read with the naked eye, and gradually get smaller to the point that each attempt to magnify the words shows there is much more on the disc.

Each language that is being used is also given "equal" treatment, other than some languages tend to be much more verbose than others such as Latin languages vs. Germanic languages or even the most efficient being Chinese (in terms of characters per word/idea in the language)

Re:Pronounce what?

[jacquesm]

you start simple and work your way up from there...

Only 2000 Years? Pffft

[Joce640k]

The Romans managed to preserve their language and culture for 2000 years completely by accident. Do you really think all the stuff we're doing today will vanish in the same time span.

In far less than 100 years the whole of today's Internet will fit on a single USB stick - smaller than a single shard of Roman pottery.

Re:Only 2000 Years? Pffft

[bcwright]

The Romans managed to preserve their language and culture for 2000 years completely by accident. Do you really think all the stuff we're doing today will vanish in the same time span.

It wasn't completely by accident - many early Roman and Greek works were deliberately preserved in the monasteries. Compare for example what happened to ancient Carthaginian culture, which is approximately the same age and which was nearly exterminated: about all that we know about them was written by their opponents.

Re:Only 2000 Years? Pffft

[bcwright]

Try reading English from 300 years ago.

Actually English from 300 years ago is quite readable by any educated modern reader (though cursive writing can be difficult because the longhand script has changed a couple of times since then). Think Shakespeare, for example.

However if you start talking about English from, say, 600 years ago, it's quite a bit more difficult (Chaucer), and from over 1000 years ago it's impossible unless you're a specialist (Beowulf).

Many other languages have evolved quite a bit in that amount of time, but a few haven't. For example, written (as opposed to spoken) Greek is much less changed over the last 2000 years than is English - classical Greek is to modern Greek more like Chaucer or Shakespeare is to modern English, rather than like the difference between Beowulf and modern English.

So even though your specific example doesn't hold water, the general sense of what you're saying is quite valid - it's quite possible (even likely) that modern English will be nearly unintelligible in 2000 years.

Some versions are copyrighted

[Selanit]

With the way things are going very soon the Bible will be the only book that's out of copyright....

Some versions of the Bible are copyrighted. Any translation undertaken in the last eighty years or so.

Oh, and in Britain the Authorized King James version is subject to Crown copyright, which is perpetual. It's never going to enter the public domain. Probably not even if the monarchy were to be abolished -- any British government which saw fit to abolish the monarchy would likely retain its privileges for the state. Not that it seems like the monarchy's going away any time soon.

WTF ?

[daveime]

replicate the disk promiscuously

Only nerds too long in their basements would use this kind of terminology !

The rest of us would say "make a lot of copies".

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense...

[Dasaan]

Put a massive repository of scientific and mathematical knowledge on it and I'd buy one for £100.

Re:Pronounce what?

[Muad'Dave]

Well, here's how I'd do it, cartoon-style

1. In the first frame put an image of a tuning fork and a representative atom of iron. Have the disk itself next to the tuning fork to indicate that the tines should be the same length as the diameter of the disk they have in their [hot | cold | slimy ] alien hands.
2. In the next picture, show the tuning fork being struck, and waves emanating from it.
3. In the next frame, show the details of a single sine wave, and put lines marking one cycle of the wave and text that says the symbolic equivalent of '1 Hertz'.
4. In the next frame, show the tuning fork vibrating again, with the symbols for whatever frequency the pure iron fork resonates at.
5. Show the sine wave with an arbitrary integer max amplitude of 1000 and show it being sampled periodically, with the numbers being copied into a list.
6. In the next frame, show a human with sound waves emanating from their mouth, and numbers flowing into a list.
7. Put a list of numbers on the disk so that they can reconstruct a simple WAV-like file of human speech.

Logical next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds great. Now we need one with a copy of Wikipedia on it, so that all human knowledge can be preserved as well.

Re:Logical next step...

[Ihmhi]

Oh, that would be lovely. "Albert Einstein was a scientist who JASON MAYNOR SUCKS COCK developed one of the most important theories..."

Re:Pronounce what?

[TheRaven64]

Assume an utterly alien audience

Why? The foundation doesn't, they assume an audience of humans in the future. Their goal is to preserve knowledge for our descendants, not for some hypothetical alien archaeologist.

Re:Also, bury at the Georgia Guidestones

[PopeRatzo]

If they could get permission

Permission from who? The Illuminati?

Do you have their email address?

No 2.000 years

[mseeger]

Hi,

if you treat this disk the way the original rosetta stone has been treated, nobody will be able to decipher it afterwards. The only reason we were able the rosetta stone: The chars were relatively big. High information density and long lifetime (in any conditions) are contradictions....

Yours, Martin

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense...

[GrievousMistake]

The plan is to mass produce them, eventually. I expect that if they do find a way to manufacture these cheaply, other projects will want to manufacture their own discs, esp. with stuff like Wikipedia. It would be nice if they became popular with publishers and the like. Having a couple of these around is good, but having a more heterogeneous collection of high-density durable information repositories scattered around would be priceless.

And as a fan of dystopian future scenarios, the very idea of future primitives occasionally happening across these valuable information artifacts as they rummage through ruins for scrap metal makes me all warm and fuzzy. In fact, I'm slightly miffed that they can hold so damn much information. This way we'll never have a gatherer returning to his village with a small shiny globe, that upon inspection turns out to be an artifact of the ancients that reveals the schematics for building a more powerful coil gun, which gives them an edge in fending off the attacks of the neighbouring tribes. Having the best of Wikipedia, or maybe the archives of a couple of good research journals is much more helpful and versatile of course, but not nearly as romantic. ;-)

Re:GOATSE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://goatse.cz/
  You nerds love it!

Says the guy who has goatse bookmarked.

Re:Should have left out the religion

[guruevi]

Do you really know the meaning of the words "day" in the original language? No, it's only the Catholic Church and some other prominent so-called "christian" organizations that promote that idea.

On the other hand, Genesis is one of the oldest book in the world that has survived thousands of years with minimal to no copying or translation differences across translations (only difference is in interpretation) since it has been written down. It's also available in almost all religions (the Christian, Jewish and Islamic religions) and languages (anywhere there was an influence of the before mentioned) of this world, it can be found in more than 90% of the world, most likely a translation will survive within 2000 years.

It's also one of those books that has the basic/simplistic/root names (in all those languages) for members of the universe we can see with the naked eye (planet, moon, sun, stars, earth, life, male, female, sea, animals, vegetation) all in those 3 chapters as well as some abstract (religious/social) passages like cursing, naming, unions of man and woman, God, clothing.

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:We're in the minority here

[not-my-real-name]

Whether the Genesis account is believed or not, it is familiar to a large number of people. Whether you believe it or not, it's an important part of western culture. Trying to ignore it would be like trying to ignore Shakespeare in English literature.

Original sin is nonsense

[sjbe]

You are an troll and a serious coward but this was too much fun to pass up.

The point that you're missing entirely is that there is NO SUCH THING as a good person.

Which is a premise that I fundamentally disagree with and why I'm not a christian. If you want to convince someone of your logic you might want to start with a premise both parties agree to. Furthermore you'll have to come up with a definition of "good" so that we can be sure we are talking about the same thing.

Even your hypothetical "good atheist's" actions were tainted with self-righteousness.

Helping others == "self-righteousness"? Can be but certainly doesn't have to be. Are you trying to say we shouldn't help others because that would be "self-righteous"?

Better to be a sinner and know it than a pompous ass who thinks that he's perfect.

I'm not aware of anyone who thinks they are perfect though I do know some people who try very, very hard to be. The fact that no one is perfect does not and never will logically equal "no such thing as a good person".

Careful, there.

[JeanPaulBob]

Your critique of pharisaical religion is good, and there's certainly a lot of that around among professing Christians. But two cautions for you:

1.) Make sure you stay humble as you critique "Pharisees", or you'll be acting holier-than-thou. I think those tendencies are present in everyone. I hate that, and pray that God will be changing my heart. But it's important not to forget that it's there.

2.) When you say that "Christianity is about self-sacrifice, living as Christ lived, and loving as Christ loved," make sure you maintain the difference between (1) walking in the Spirit, being transformed to be more like Christ, and (2) the good news. If you walk up to someone and tell them, "Look at Jesus! Live like he lived!", then you haven't given them good news. Because, as you said, we can't measure up to that standard.

The life of a Christian is about what you said. But the gospel is forgiveness, salvation, adoption, and the receipt of the Holy Spirit--by faith, not by working to be like Christ.

Re:And people complain the Bible is fiction...

[kesuki]

i can see plenty of people worshiping the flying spaghetti monster by then, remember harry potter isn't marketed as religion, and while the FSM is marketed as how stupid real religion is, because of the way it parallels real religion we're not far off from people actually worshiping the FSM as real, it's hard coded into our brains, when certain stimuli eg:Near death experiences, specific EM shocks to the brain, disease and hunger and drug induced hallucination.

that or people will start worshiping the 'invisible pink unicorn' not quite sure which one i would 'rather' have replace the 'one true god'