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How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years
Whiteox writes with Fast Company's article about Robert Grass and his team, which is exploring how to use DNA as a data storage mechanism, along with others working on truly long-term storage. Both commercial interests and academic researchers are interested in protecting data not just for years or decades, but for multi-century stretches, right out into the millions. From the article: The idea of storing information on DNA traces back to a Soviet lab in the 1960s, but the first successful implementation wasn't achieved until 2012, when biologist George Church and his colleagues announced in the journal Science that they had encoded one of Church's books in DNA. More recently, reports the New Yorker, the artist Joe Davis, now in residence at Church's lab, has announced plans to encode bits of Wikipedia into a particularly old strain of apple, so that he can create "a living, literal tree of knowledge. "Impressive," writes Whiteox, "but I wonder if our future selves can make life from our archived data?"
Yeah, the idea of using DNA to 'store' information for multi millennial time frames seems weird. The stuff mutates and degrades.
OTOH, if your storing Brittney Spears and Justin Bieber, this might well be a feature, not a bug.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
1) Put our collective knowledge into edible form and grow it on trees.
2) Put them in the Forbidden Garden for security, with stern warnings against eating the apples.
3) Adam and Eve wonder what the apples over in there yonder trees taste like.
4) *CRUNCH* *MUNCH* *SLURP* Mmmm...would be good baked in a nice crust with some cinnamon and sugar...
5) Bake-off and Pie eating contest!!
6) Angry lord of the orchard evicts Adam and Eve
7) Perpetual guilt and ignorance ensue.
This sounds like the makings of a good book, especially if one could work in some nudity action between Adam and Eve.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Just wait until their system gets infected with a virus!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways