New DVDs For 1,000-Year Digital Storage

anonymous cowpie sends word of a Utah startup that is about to introduce technology for writing DVDs that can be read for 1,000 years after being stored at room temperature. (Ordinary DVDs last anywhere from 3 to 12 years, on average.) The company, Millenniata, is said to be in the final stages of negotiation with Phillips over patent licensing and plans to begin manufacture in September. 1,000-year "M-ARC Discs" are expected to retail for $25-$30 at first, with the price coming down with volume. "Dubbed the Millennial Disk, it looks virtually identical to a regular DVD, but it's special. Layers of hard, 'persistent' materials (the exact composition is a trade secret) are laid down on a plastic carrier, and digital information is literally carved in with an enhanced laser using the company's Millennial Writer, a sort of beefed-up DVD burner. Once cut, the disk can be read by an ordinary DVD reader on your computer."

Comments

How do we KNOW that..

[NervousNerd]

How do we KNOW that they'll REALLY last 1,000 years?

Re:How do we KNOW that..

[CarpetShark]

rain forests

Rain?

For rests?

Fascinating. Just 2,000 years ago, rain was a torture method. And just 1,000 years later, it seems to have developed into some the much-mentioned but never seen "rest and relaxation". So much of our past is yet to be discovered.

Re:How do we KNOW that..

[MindKata]

Talking about 1000 and 2000 years in the past, I prefer to think about what it could be like when we are seen as the distant past.

It seems very likely the changes in the next 1000 years are going to be much bigger than the changes in the previous 1000 years simply as we have so many better tools today, including far better information tools which helps to accelerate creating new technology.

I hope in 1000 years from now they will look back at us as if we are some kind of very early version of what they see as their technological dark ages. Although I would like to hope in 2000 years from now, the people then would be able to ask some of their oldest friends what it was like 1000 years ago.

Sure. 1000 years.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

And this assumes that in 1000 years there will be:

1. a player to play the damn thing
2. the resources to build a player to play the damn thing.
3. a screen to view it on
4. the resources to build a screen to view it on
5. the cultural interest in such behaviour (sitting and watching a screen)
6. the cultural capacity to decode and understand what the hell they're watching even if they do decide to watch it, assuming they have the ability to do so. For an extreme example, there is a non-zero probability that in 1000 years, the notion of "fiction" may well not exist, in which case an episode of "Friends" or "Seinfeld" become biographical portraits of stupid foolish people, as one needs to have the fictive distance to decode what is happening.
7. that anyone will give a rat's ass about us in a 1000 years. They may well be pissing on our graves for having ruined the planet, and these disks may simply be destroyed as examples of the evil Evil EVIL petroleum age.
8. Reverse engineering NTSC (SD or HD - just getting 29.97fps with rectangular pixels is fucked up enough) from a disc filled with microscopic pits strikes me as impossible and or pointless.

I can list many more reasons why a 1000 year disk is a waste of time, those are just a few off the top of my head.

Frankly, I think we are the civilisation that in 1000 years will be a great and tantalizing mystery. Their world will be filled with our garbage, telling them how we lived (like wasteful pigs at the trough) but they won't really know that much about what we think (because it was all digital and the technology disappeared in the die-off).

RS

Re:Wondering

[TaoPhoenix]

You mean fewer.

From the musical Big River*

She's got one big breast in the middle of her chest
And an eye in the middle of her nose
So says I, if you look her in the eye
You're better off looking up her nose

(* This post is for cultural research only. No sales of Hulu(tm) ads have been created out of contract by this post. This does not constitute a song.)