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Ask Slashdot: Permanent Preservation of Human Knowledge?

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-mean-facebook-won't-survive-the-apocalypse? dept.

Wayne2 writes "While there have been many attempts to preserve human knowledge in electronic format, it occurred to me that these attempts all assume that human civilization remains more or less intact. Given humanity's history of growth and collapse with knowledge repeatedly gained then lost, has anyone considered a more permanent solution? I realize that this could be very difficult and/or expensive depending on how long we want to preserve the information and what assumptions we make regarding posterity's ability to access it. Alternatively, are we, as a species, willing to start over if we experience a catastrophe, pandemic, etc. of significant magnitude on a global scale that derails our progress and sends us back to the dark ages or worse?"

4 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. This one gives an idea: by SYSS+Mouse · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Terminal_Event_Management_Policy

  2. Rosetta Project/Long Now by joshv · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out the Rosetta Project - http://rosettaproject.org/about/

    1. Re:Rosetta Project/Long Now by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 4, Informative

      A project of the Long Now Foundation, who don't just think about what to do about long term preservation as an academic exercise. They actually do something about it. With money. (Still not very much money though.)

      Check out their purely mechanical multi-millennial clock project too.

  3. The Long Now Foundation by Memophage · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you're not familiar with The Long Now Foundation you should check them out. They have a project to build a clock that will last 10,000 years (about as long again as there's been civilization on earth), and are making progress constructing it in a cave in a mountain in Nevada.

    Of course, the next questions are things like "well, who is going to be around to read it?" and "how will they read it?", and "how do we maintain a level of civilization where people can create replacement parts for it?"

    Neal Stephenson consulted with them for his book Anathem, which I highly recommend, which is based around these sorts of questions.