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Data Preservation and How Ancient Egypt Got It Right
storagedude writes to tell us that a storage geek has an interesting article on why ancient Egyptians were better than us at data preservation — and what we need to do to get caught up. "After rocks, the human race moved on to writing on animal skins and papyrus, which were faster at recording but didn't last nearly as long. Paper and printing presses were even faster, but also deteriorated more quickly. Starting to see a pattern? And now we have digital records, which might last a decade before becoming obsolete. Recording and handing down history thus becomes an increasingly daunting task, as each generation of media must be migrated to the next at a faster and faster rate, or we risk losing vital records."
As recording things became easier, more things were recorded. At some point we began recording things that no-one will ever care about, and now keep things recorded that we didn't even know were recorded (care to see my router logs?). The less significant something is, the less we need to worry about preserving it. Of course, there are things worth preserving, but most of it just isn't.
A lot of data retention is because of legal requirements. At the bank I work at, we're required to keep *everything* for at least seven years - all our emails are archived, instant messenger communications, etc.
There's no place like localhost
I don't know of any other way to preserve our pr0n on rocks.
I'm not sure if they "got it right". After a few thousand years we have yet to agree on what they were even writing.
Interesting, TFA goes on about strategies for making sure stuff lasts. But he even touches on the more interesting facet of this briefly - no one can read the damn Hieroglyphs any more, so what does it matter that it lasted 4000 years?
What is more interesting to me is a way to cheaply, efficiently, include a sort of Rosetta Stone along with archival data meant for long-term storage. Hell, even the devices themselves... he talks at the end a bit about format issues, frex. Some kind of key to the interface or logic needed to reconstruct the method of reading the medium..? Anyone got a wax cylander lying around? If you ran across one, how long would it take you to be able to hear what was on it - and what're the odds of you damaging it in the process, especially if you had to dig up schematics and build a player yourself..?
That which does not kill us makes us... st
Seriously what a piece of complete and utter rubbish. From Ancient Egypt we have an extremely limited set of information because stone tablets crack and they aren't exactly the most portable things in the world. Go through to the Romans and paper, and the Chinese and you are seeing massively more information become available down the centuries. Zoom forwards into the 14th Century and we have a massively detailed view of what life was like which becomes more and more detailed as time goes by. The key here is detail, the amount of information in Ancient Egypt was huge, probably comparable to today, but the amount that was etched onto pyramids was tiny and quite a lot of that didn't survive anyway.
The key things that future historians need are prime sources and one thing that the internet is massively impressive at is the duplication of information and the avoidance of redundancy. Stone is rubbish for this, no-one bothers making copies so you lose the original and you lose everything.
Printing introduced simpler copies which meant that the information was more likely to survive down the years. With modern digital technology this increases still further. It is ridiculous to claim that digitally we won't have more information about the major events and people of today which is available in 400 years. We will have more CRAP available in 400 years (blogs, twitter, Slashdot) than any generation of historians have had to wade through.
Digital technology makes accurate duplication simple and that is the most powerful way to make sure information survives. Wikileaks is the embodiment of that view. The issue is that there is now SO MUCH CRAP that the issue for future historians will be in wading through all of the blog posts of "Obama is a Muslim" to find out that in fact he wasn't.
A rubbish supposition which is massively undermined by every time there is a censorship case the plea to "mirror the information".
Some information will be lost but the amount that will survive is miles higher than the amount of information that survived from Ancient Egypt. For instance its amazing to Bible Literalists that NOT ONCE in their SIX THOUSAND YEARS OF RECORDED HISTORY did the ancient Egyptians ever mention all getting drowned in a global flood... and you'd have thought they'd have noticed that.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Etch barcodes into rocks.
We Lenny them into rocks.
If it wasn't for the lucky find and preservation of the Rosetta stone, how long would it have taken us to decipher Egyptian hierogylphics? Not exactly an open standard...
I know nothing about the field of data preservation, but is there a Darwinian pruning of data that occurs? Do we really need to keep copies of ALL of our data for thousands of years, or do the truly "vital" emails/books/stone tablets have a much greater lifespan because they have actual value?
Yea, rocks don't need backups, but very few people could read them, and even less could 'etch' them.
I think the unprecedented decentralization and free flow of information of our time is far superior, even if the media we use is much less durable.
On the issue of formats he makes a very valid point tho. All we can do is support open formats and hope others follow our example so they gain momentum and become widespread and long lived.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I think I speak for all of us when I say I do not want other people's files telling my cells what to do.
you don't have to destroy the nodes. Destroy the power plants, and the cloud evaporates.
The North east blackout of 2003 showed us. In a blink all of our data retention methods fail. Portable generators won't last long enough.
what is needed is two things. a way to store electricity that isn't chemical(battery), and multiple methods of power generation. So we aren't dependent on any one source. Local power storage and generation(Heck even 5kw on the roof of your home will pay for your air conditioning) will take the burden off the power grid. and then the cloud can still be up there.
Also storage on the cloud? are companies really that stupid? Clouds can be seen by everyone there won't be any truly secure cloud storage.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
This is another case of only seeing part of the problem. Data preservation is easy. The problem is, we generate massive amounts of data. Data doesn't have an expiration date. It doesn't automatically categorize itself, know its own relevance, or volunteer itself for tasks. See, the vast majority of "data" floating around can be safely discarded. Do you really need an ethernet sniff log of everything you've done on the internet over the past ten years? The government might want a copy, but chances are pretty good its just as useless to them as you. How about those four (broken) copies of that mp3 you downloaded from Shareaza? Or outdated installers of software? Is there a reason to keep around those Netware 3.12 floppies (besides impressing other old farts)?
The problem isn't preserving data, it's knowing when to let it go. We have many, many, many methods of data preservation. We are drowning in information. The internet is generating petabytes worth of data every day, and only the smallest fraction of that really has any reuse value. And most of that, in six months, or a few years, probably not. What we need is better methods of sorting data, and ways to expire data safely.
Also, we also need control over our data. Corporations have been trying to take that away now for years. You don't need a copy of our software that can run on any computer, we're going to mung it up so it only runs on one computer, and if you have to reinstall the operating system or change the video card or anything else, that copy will cease to work. An irony, really -- because I know plenty of people that love playing old video games whose manufacturers long ago gave up on, but won't release the copyright for. Fifty years from now, I doubt a single copy of the game will still exist -- the concept, maybe. But it will have died and yet someone will still own the copyright and think money could be made off it. When we buy a chunk of data, we need to be able to control it, not just use it in some narrowly-defined way. Because otherwise, what's the point of data preservation in the first place? To stockpile more useless data that -- even worse, holding onto could be a liability to you?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'd show you some examples, but they kinda fell to pieces sometime around 200BC. What we have left is the stuff that preserves well.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
The entire piece consists of:
1. Saw an Egyptian obelisk which had lasted for a long time.
2. Our modern data preservation methods aren't built for longevity.
3. Rocks have better data integrity than digital archives.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll be sure to keep that in mind when I'm deciding whether to save my memoirs on rock or .doc. Really helpful stuff.
on our hard drives. Porn. That will keep them scratching their heads for years.
"This primitive race seemed to be preoccupied with sex. So how did they fail to reproduce and let their race die out?"
Way back in the ancient times, only important stuff was carved into stone. Now everyone on our planet is squirreling away all kinds of useless crap on digital media.
Future alien archeologists will have a hell of a job sorting out the crap from the, well, stuff that is just a little less than crap.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Digital information can be easily duplicated and transferred to other media. You can save the entire library of congress on hard disk, convert it to DVD, or print it out on paper. And all of it can be almost fully automated with near zero chance of error. Try doing a backup of your stone tablet library in a reasonable amount of time, labor, and accuracy. There is just no comparison.
I really thought there was going to be something special here, that the ancient Egyptians found some way to preserve data better we do now in modern society.
Does the author not realize that he's only looking at a rock that survived, and not one of the millions of rocks that turned to dust over the years?
If someone in 5,000 years finds a USB flash drive exhibit in some park with the data still readable off the device, that will not be proof that USB flash storage is the ultimate in storage technology, it'll only prove that that one USB flash drive lasted for 5,000 years.
The whole article is ridiculous. The first sentence is
My wife and I were in New York's Central Park last fall when we saw a nearly 4,000-year-old Egyptian obelisk that has been remarkably well preserved, with hieroglyphs that were clearly legible
What is remarkable about that? If you want to put a ancient Egypt rock in the Central Park, do you use a shattered obelisk where you can't read anything or do you take the nice one?
And how ignorant is the author to ignore all the broken, lost and otherwise destroyed rocks that didn't survive?
If you want to write an article about the lack of metadata standards and your perceived lack of long-term storage options, fine, but don't built it around your wifes spontaneous epiphanies.
This is why I've been chiseling reddit headlines into the concrete in my driveway. And the neighbors call me crazy!!!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
no one can read the damn Hieroglyphs any more, so what does it matter that it lasted 4000 years?
Actually, I can read some Hieroglyphics. For example, the ones in the article's picture refer to something about "DVMCAIIXV takethdown notyce for CovpyriGt Infrryngemynt" or something like that.
At the bottom it is signed by the "RIVV".
what is needed is two things. a way to store electricity that isn't chemical(battery
This part can probably be handled by memristors.
Can anyone tell me what the conversion factor is from Libraries of Congress to Libraries of Alexandria?
You can't put DRM on a rock.
This tablet is the property of King Tut
You are authorized to read this tablet at any time you want, but only between sunrise and noon
except Thursdays
If you make any unauthorized readings of this tablet or transcribe this tablet
you will be cursed by Ra Almighty and Isis will be waiting to take all belongings you bring with you to your afterlife
PS I now own your soul
My webcomic
No, that is what capacitors do.
Orwell's loss of history was no accident. Not carelessness. It was a deliberate attack on it, to make it fit particular viewpoints.
A contemporary example would be the re-representing of the "founding fathers" as secular individuals.
In Soviet Russia it was the brutal repression of all knowledge of the state that went immediately before it. All history was but a "detail" not to be given much attention. All you needed to know about history is that it lead to the "great leader" taking control.
Historically many more states destroyed their history than preserved it. Ancient Egypt suppressed large parts of it's past. So did the Jewish kingdoms. The same goes for China. The Roman empire didn't repress history, but the Vandals and Visigoths (who were "democratic") did. All islamic states have massively repressed large parts of their history and have tried (and sometimes succeeded) in repressing external records of their history, and they're still doing it today. E.g. the ancient destruction of the (then Roman Catholic) library of alexandria, and more recent the destruction of a historical account of a trip through Persia by an Iranian agent. Perhaps the most well known destruction of history was the destruction of the Buddha's of Afghanistan. All muslim territory, except one part of a single city has only non-muslim historical sites. Mecca itself is the remains of a mostly Jewish traders' town. Saudi Arabia is teeming with mostly Jewish and Christian remains of city-states, forts, marketplaces and city walls, all knowledge of which is brutally repressed. So are countries like Egypt and Sudan, in fact the whole of Northern Africa is. Nearly all landmarks in Turkey are christian in origin, with the few remaining secular (the blue "mosque" was designed by a jew, modeled after the biggest christian church in existence), a fact that you best keep to yourself in Turkey.
Data loss will, like in the states before us, not be an accident. It will be deliberate destruction, like in Orwell's books.
It just takes a certain kind of person AND a certain kind of state to preserve anything of value in the first place.
...is a collection of oral histories from Israel and the areas surrounding it, modified to promote the idea of one true God. The oral histories are a collection of both fictional morality tales and actual facts, and is therefore one of the best guides to what exactly was going on during the transition from pre-history.
That said, I am an atheist. I just don't discount the information that has been passed down for thousands of years as a bunch of hogwash, especially when much of it has in fact been proven true by following the text and discovering ancient ruined cities.
Rocks DO need backing up. Scribes in Sumer maintained traditions over thousands of years of recopying clay tablets to preserve them. Even the ancient Persian conquerors of Babylon constructed museums of the already very ancient objects they found there. The same was true of later scribal traditions on leather and parchment which preserved classical documents for us, and the ways of reading them. In fact, if it weren't for the far superior concern for posterity the middle ages showed, we would not have the smattering of knowledge about the classical world we have managed to hold on to.
I am a linguist who studies clay tablets and ancient writing systems, and let me tell you, I lose sleep over this problem every day. What will happen (and note that I don't say would, because it is inconceivable that the "cloud" will last a thousand years, let alone five thousand) when they don't know what kind of electricity we used? Where will the remains of our civilization be? There is a basic point here which the "wayback machine" doesn't go far enough to answer. Where will they find our information stored, and how will they ever, ever, devise a way to read it? Bear in mind that we have trouble deciphering the earliest and most primitive writing systems ever devised even now. There are still dozens of these we can't read, and many more we haven't even rediscovered yet.
And, it turns out, a lot of what has happened to survive for us to read from all that time ago really is about as exciting as server logs - receipts for tithes, buying and selling grain, etc. And those tell us so many surprising and extraordinarily valuable things about the way the people who produced them lived, which the documents they intentionally preserved (such as king lists, prayers, mythologies) would never have thought to mention. So don't underestimate the value of the information you think is worthless! A thousand years from now they will regard you as a deluded primitive, but they will be interested in your internet traffic and your credit card records. But of course, don't forget to preserve the art too.