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How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years

Posted by timothy on from the send-it-to-the-irs dept.

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?"

75 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Ever wonder by koan · · Score: 2

    Where animals instinctual behaviors come from?

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:Ever wonder by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      Where animals instinctual behaviors come from?

      Wikipedia in their genes?

    2. Re:Ever wonder by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Hopefully the backup includes Encyclopedia Dramatica.

      1.2 million years from now... Excited scientists huddle over the display monitor. A new paper has been released, one based on data from the Ancient Knowledge. The study appears on the screen, "A Treatise on 'Poop is Coming Out Now.'" Life will never be the same...

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  2. There is another theory... by ajedgar · · Score: 1

    ...which states that this has already happened.

    Our _past_ selves created life from the archived data....

    1. Re:There is another theory... by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I saw it on Futurama
      http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki...

      --
      Wherever You Go, There You Are
  3. Ask these folks... by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    http://longnow.org/

    DNA mutates when alive and degrades when dead, there have to be other options

    --
    Wherever You Go, There You Are
    1. Re:Ask these folks... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      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!
    2. Re:Ask these folks... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      And how the hell could you fix the spelling errors?

      Sigh.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. Re:Ask these folks... by koan · · Score: 1

      DNA is surprisingly robust, in any case portions of our own DNA are very, very old, and still the same.

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    4. Re:Ask these folks... by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Store a data for a million years, how about finding some spare planets, say a couple of hundred to store the computers to store a million years worth of data. The whole egoistic arrogance that future generations, already pretty pissed off by the state of the planet we left them give a crap about the bulk of the data being produced today. They will of course want to revile those most responsible, be able to look upon them and curse, try to see the evil in their eyes that they would leave a planet in that state to feed their own ego and lusts but beyond that, well, they will be far more interested in the content they create. Perhaps a few might enjoy permanently deleting information about the ancestors they loathe, sort of a big screw you and likely that wont take a million years, just a hundred or so.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    5. Re:Ask these folks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I also find that it's often people that live in the city, and are young, that have this view.

      They've never encountered nature, don't know how to live with it, and all of their fear, concern and horror about the state of the environment isn't from direct experience -- but instead, from information they've absorbed 3rd, 4th, or 1000th hand.

      This may not be true of you. However, I wonder, do you live in the middle of the country? Do you live surrounded by thousands of acres and acres of forest? Do you have your own well, or do you get water from a city?

      I'm willing to bet, water is provided by a city for you.

      Here's something to think about, city dweller.

      Do you know you can't 'waste' water? It's quite impossible. Pumping water into your sink, and down the drain, doesn't 'waste' it. It still exists!

      Further, the *more* water you pump into the sewer, the *cleaner* the sewer water becomes. If every resident just turned on their taps, and let them run continually? You'd be able to *drink* sewer water. The piss, shit and what not would be diluted that much!

      However, back to my main point. "Wasting" water is a term invented by city planners, because it costs *money* to clean water before it re-enters a river or what not. You see, it's about MONEY, not about the WATER. It's about taxes, and paying for cleaning that water you used.

      Living in the country, as I do, I have a septic system. And a well. And in my location, a very healthy water table.

      As in, I can turn the water on, and NEVER turn it off, and I will NEVER run out.

      And, my septic system cleans the water, naturally. With bacteria, and with plant live above it. I am constantly drinking water that has apparently been "wasted". I flush a toilet, it goes into the septic system, the septic system cleans it and it goes back into the well eventually.

      So, many of the things you believe are LIES. The same goes with recycling! Did you know, that the city PAYS to have garbage recycled? But you see, it pays LESS than it pays for other garbage! So, all of the push for recycling? It's to SAVE MONEY.

      If you look into the energy costs, the problems even today with separating plastics, and the chemicals / etc used to recycle -- you'll find it really doesn't do much. Except, of course, SAVE THE CITY MONEY!

      Think about these things please.

    6. Re:Ask these folks... by sshir · · Score: 2

      Only parts that are vital for the organism are preserved (more or less). Everything else is trashed or/and cut out completely.

    7. Re:Ask these folks... by Nehmo · · Score: 1
      Correct. It seems DNA will correct it'self by eventually dumping unnecessary data. What's not needed to be fit has no reason to be selected by the environment. Plus, what's to guarantee the species with the DNA will survive?

      To keep the data indefinitely, you could easily put the storage medium in a stable orbit around the sun or something. It would survive, but I'm not sure if anybody would ever read it.

      --
      (||) Nehmo (||)
    8. Re:Ask these folks... by amRadioHed · · Score: 1

      If a segment of DNS is critical to our survival than I'm sure it can survive quite long without any mutation. But some arbitrary strand of DNA with no relevance to its host organism's survival can and will mutate freely.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    9. Re:Ask these folks... by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 2

      I live surrounded by hundreds of miles of desert, I could drive until my tank is dry and still see nothing but desert

      If everything goes to shit I would want to be able to gain access to information about how to survive better, how to make antibiotics, where to get drinkable water, what plants to eat, how to mine and refine metals, maybe even how to operate a small number of electronic devices and repair them

      What people's opinions were, what deities they worshiped and why they went to war could be used for heat on a cold night if it was in a format that could be used that way.

      Eventually, my descendents or myself may want to learn calculus, perform surgery and generate power from the sun or radioactive fuels. It would be really handy to have a durable means to store that information that I could retrieve without having to completely rebuild an advanced technological society first

      --
      Wherever You Go, There You Are
    10. Re:Ask these folks... by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 1

      ...and I have read that we cannot clone mastodons because the 10,000 years that the DNA has sat in a frozen dry environment has caused too many data errors

      a millions years... good luck. You are either expecting very long telomeres to be fixing it during replication or having it stored near absolute zero

      --
      Wherever You Go, There You Are
    11. Re:Ask these folks... by koan · · Score: 1

      How does it know what's "critical" to our survival?
      It would also depend on where you put the data, what section.

      DNA is well-suited for biological information storage. The DNA backbone is resistant to cleavage, and both strands of the double-stranded structure store the same biological information. Biological information is replicated as the two strands are separated. A significant portion of DNA (more than 98% for humans) is non-coding, meaning that these sections do not serve as patterns for protein sequences.

      Plus there's always "error correction" and redundancy.

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    12. Re:Ask these folks... by koan · · Score: 1

      You have portions of your DNA that is likely to be 45,000 years old or more, rather the "same as" Homo sapiens from 45K years ago.

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    13. Re:Ask these folks... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      So the Kardashians my represent some alien's long-ago attempt to communicate with us?

    14. Re:Ask these folks... by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

      I already solved it.

    15. Re:Ask these folks... by CmdrTamale · · Score: 1

      ...It would be really handy to have a durable means to store that information that I could retrieve without having to completely rebuild an advanced technological society first...

      You would still need the tool chain.
      --
      History is just a highlight reel.

    16. Re:Ask these folks... by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      [......] It would be really handy to have a durable means to store that information that I could retrieve without having to completely rebuild an advanced technological society first

      Good luck reading data stored in DNA under those circumstances!

    17. Re:Ask these folks... by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      Our future generations will probably not even know about global warming, or that the threat even existed. After all, do you know anything about events, which were averted, 500 years ago?

      Tbey also may not know about the deforestation and soil erosion, but they'll live with the consequences of it - just as we do today.

    18. Re:Ask these folks... by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      The medal box is empty at the moment, but we're expecting a shipment any day. Yours will be on its way to you as soon as they come in.

      (I also live in the country - in northern Australia - and my water comes from the sky, via my roof and a rainwater tank. There's millions of acres of savannah woodland around here, and very few people, no town water or sewerage. I'm close to 60. And, no, I don't want a medal, thanks.)

    19. Re:Ask these folks... by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      How does it know what's "critical" to our survival?[......]

      "It" doesn't need to know. If it's not there, that gene can't get passed on, as the organism doesn't survive.

    20. Re:Ask these folks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Frankly, we're on the cusp of unlimited, pollution free energy. With it, will come unlimited prosperity, and the ability to live without the destruction you think occurs, which only barely occurs, right now.

      Our future generations will probably not even know about global warming, or that the threat even existed. After all, do you know anything about events, which were averted, 500 years ago?

      How do you even sleep at night with that sunny/bright-sided disposition?

      You DO realize that the energy crisis is an entirely manufactured problem in the first place right? IE: Jimmy Carter's signing of the "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Act_of_1978

      If we had kept investing in Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing/Breeder Reactors:
      A) Nuclear Power would have continued to be profitable and countless high paying jobs supporting the nuclear industry would be contributing to the economy
      B) Oil prices would be significantly cheaper->Food & Transportation of Goods would translate to lower prices for goods on store shelves
      C) Nuclear Freight Ships(just putting that out there as the primary driver of Global Warming) See: "Free trade agreements"
      D) Consumer spending would be higher due to less strain on their wallets from gas expenses
      E) International stability(Oil is the only reason the United States/Russia/China have been fighting proxy wars in the "sand box" for the past ~40-60 years)
      F) No genocide in Darfur/Sudan
      G) No Yemen refugees flooding Europe
      H) North Korea would have already collapsed without the Nuclear Weapon boogeyman
      I) Iran would still be a democracy
      J) Saddam Hussein never would have taken power
      K) American GIs wouldn't have died in Gulf War I or Operation Iraqi Freedom
      L) Syria/Libya wouldn't have had dictatorships propped up by the U.S. State Dept. (see: "They hate us because we're free/ain't us")
      M) NASA would be able to do much more interesting science with an abundance of Plutonium RTG's
      N) NOAA/NSF/NASA/NRO would have more Helium-3 to play with.

      Now we're fucked:
      Embroiled in the sand box(playing moderator while ISIS/ISIL has their own little "Rawana") meanwhile: China/Russia seize on our distractions for advantage. China is leveraging our lack of investment in information security to take the Rare Earth Metals in the South China Sea. They will have the next-gen Nuclear Reactors AND the electric cars/electric highway infrastructure/high speed rail while the United States & Europe are shivering in the dark burning car tires for warmth while taxing themselves to death with Cap & Trade based on a flawed premise.

      Thus are the just-desserts of corporate plutocracy. The first world has been engaged in a sado-masochistic game of auto-erotic asphyxiation with their own economies(for the benefit of the economic rent-seeking behavior of the top 10 most profitable corporations on the globe) for the past 40+ years.

    21. Re:Ask these folks... by MrNaz · · Score: 1

      "The first world has been engaged in a sado-masochistic game of auto-erotic asphyxiation with their own economies(for the benefit of the economic rent-seeking behavior of the top 10 most profitable corporations on the globe) for the past 40+ years."

      Best. Comment. Ever.

      --
      I hate printers.
    22. Re:Ask these folks... by MrNaz · · Score: 2

      Yes. It's their way of saying "go fuck yourself".

      --
      I hate printers.
    23. Re:Ask these folks... by KGIII · · Score: 1

      To be fair, there are exceptions. I live on the side of a mountain, have a real artesian well and have a dug well that was here when I got here. It is only two tiles deep but near a stream. Neither have ever run dry. I can not have any neighbors move in, I own all the land around me. I have an embarrassing amount of acreage so just suffice to say, I am not going to have neighbors that can impact my water. Ever... I have crops growing, trees. (I have a large garden but that is not what you intended.) I am tree-wealthy I guess. I have more trees than the above poster will see when they drive through the desert until their tank is empty. They can even count shrubs and bushes.

      But that is not the point. I will not run out of water. I can't even if I start a free car wash and fill a giant duck pond every year. I will never run out of water, food, or anything. That is not the point. My kids will not run out of water. That, too, is not the point. Eventually, if nothing changes, someone will be here and the tap will run dry. If they still have electricity to spare (solar and grid, putting in three, high mast, wind mills this year) then they will be able to pull from the dug well - maybe. It is not about me, it is not about my children, it is not even about my children's children. It will eventually happen and this will likely be sooner than later if the things I can not control go unchanged.

      If you, or anyone, gets the time then go to YouTube, search for, "I Have Seen the World Change," at the search results select to filter them, change to searching for playlists, let it search then find the one that suits your needs (one has all episodes in order), and then watch. The one in Nepal is very moving and full of good information. I am skeptical of the science, the conclusions drawn from a limited an potentially improper data set, but I have no doubt about the changing climate and that humans are impacting this change. I, too, have seen the world change. I am exposed to it daily, notice it daily, and can only cope with it at my end and make the small changes that I can make and do what I can to mitigate it locally.

      I lived in North Carolina for a long time. I lived in Virginia for a long time. I spent a moderate amount of time in Florida. I lived in Maine, where I reside now, and I used to live in Maine for much of the year as I came here to attend a prep-school. It is not my perception. The temperature in the winter no longer goes down below zero and stays there for very long, it is usually less than a day now. There are no more storms where you get four feet of snow over a few day-long storm. In the spring the temperature is now in the 70s and 80s, it used to be mostly in the 60s to 70s. We get rain in the winter. It now rains, during the warm months, frequently in the late afternoon or early evening - just like the weather that we had in NC, VA, or FL. The summer temperatures are in the 90s much more frequently and often go over 100. People look at them and say that they are not record temperatures. That is true, they are not, what they are is a trend that shows it to be warming as an overall average. Now this is weather, not climate. This is anecdotal but anecdotes are data as much as people want to change this.

      I have a property in Panama City, FL. It is not even across the inlet and in Panama City Beach... Anyhow, this property is *maybe* 300 feet from the beach. I am old, retired, now and I expect that I will be a lot closer to the beach in just my lifetime. I expect my children to be unable to use that property by the time they are my age. Then again, I expect that they could just as easily live up here and find that they have no urge to winter in Florida.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    24. Re:Ask these folks... by KGIII · · Score: 1

      To be honest, I have a hard time accepting psychology as a science and I am not alone in this. Pseudo-science does not really make your point which means your citation is probably not the best - to me, at least. This does not mean that I disagree with you nor does it invalidate your point (if I am understanding you properly.) It simply means that you may be better served with a different citation. People may ignore your citation/point without even taking the time to read the abstract.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    25. Re:Ask these folks... by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 1

      I dunno, could it be expressed in patterns of camouflage or foliage?

      --
      Wherever You Go, There You Are
    26. Re:Ask these folks... by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      It doesn't matter what it's expressed as - or if it's expressed at all - to get the data back out of the DNA, you need complex equipment to sequenes the genes. Then you have to find the data among all the "noise".

    27. Re:Ask these folks... by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      *to sequence the genes*

    28. Re:Ask these folks... by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Explain how any psychotropic drug works.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    29. Re:Ask these folks... by allo · · Score: 1

      And then?
      Our thinking is egocentric. The nuclear catastrophe will be a desaster? yes. For us. We might die out.
      What, we're destroying the nature together with us? Define nature! We may "destroy" much of that, what we define as nature, but this definition is egocentric as well. There is nothing, which defines, that humans and animals more worthy nature than the cold "dead" planets out there. It's even unclear if they are as "dead" as you think or if it may be some other form of life.
      Use your fantasy. Maybe the whole universe is just some strain of "DNA", each planet encoding some information? We will never know at which scale of some world you can imagine we're really living.

    30. Re:Ask these folks... by KGIII · · Score: 1

      This is one of the main reasons I have difficulty accepting it as a science. That does not mean that it is not a science, just that it is full of speculation and assumptions. It is trial and error with little success. It is, even worse, very immature.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  4. "Library of Alexandria" Pie Recipe ..for Disaster! by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 3, Funny

    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!

  5. DNA degrades, forget it by Spy+Handler · · Score: 2

    They're having a hard time trying to restore from 8,000 year old backups (wooly mammoth).... 1 million is way beyond DNA specifications.

    Carbon crystal storage is probably most likely to meet 1 million year MTBF requirement

  6. It's alive! by redwraith94 · · Score: 1

    Please, PLEASE encode windows in a fungus, that way can see how monstrous it truly is, whether Xp evolves in 7 (Mother Nature would skip Vista), and study real, live, organic networking.

    --
    I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
  7. Virus by penguinoid · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
    1. Re:Virus by allo · · Score: 1

      Maybe Virii are the way to go. Bacteria mutate, virii do rather seldom.

  8. Re:"Library of Alexandria" Pie Recipe ..for Disast by PPH · · Score: 1

    This sounds like the makings of a good book,

    Rape, murder, incest, bigamy. Aliens come down from space and brainwash the population. Do you think it would sell?

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  9. Encode into an old Apple by PPH · · Score: 2

    I have an Apple IIci they can use.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  10. to hell with 1,000,000 years How about 40? by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just want to send foreward to my grandkids Audio, Video, and photos in digital form. photos I can get printed, but video and audio has no formats that will last that long. we were lucky and had simple records to carry audio forward 100 years, and film lasted a while but is already falling apart.

    Honestly Digital is going to cause a dark age. Very few people can read 9 track EBCDIC tapes from the 60's, who the hell is going to have a USB slot in 2065? even if my archival storage sandisk memory vault actually does last the 50-100 years it claims it's data retention is.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:to hell with 1,000,000 years How about 40? by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      It's an analog world.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    2. Re:to hell with 1,000,000 years How about 40? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Have you seen photographs from 40 years ago? Not in some art collection kept under careful low lighting in a controlled atmosphere, but in a book in someone's attic? They're fucked. The colour is messed up, the details are starting to go, and don't touch them because they may start to physically fall apart.

      So what a serious archivist does, someone who wants to preserve information, not just collect endless cobwebbed boxes they must never open, is they copy. Make backups onto new media periodically. The great news about digital is that this process is lossless.

      I still have the first digital photographs I took though. They're JFIF JPEGs, taken in the mid-1990s look exactly the same today as they did then. Twenty years down, twenty to go, no sign of any problems.

      I still have the first digital audio I ever recorded, from the late 1980s, it's not very good quality but then, it wasn't very good quality when I recorded it either. It's Linear PCM. You probably know that as "WAV" although technically Microsoft's WAV format can do things other than Linear PCM. Almost thirty years down, again no problems.

      In both cases I coped that data from one computer to the next, over my lifetime, no problems. The oldest files are from an Amstrad CPC, the newest ones from a multicore 64-bit laptop and an Android phone.

      Still, even though I think it's a distraction, let's get back to your USB "memory vault"

      USB slots start to appear in 1997. Still here in 2015 with no sign at all they're going anywhere. Probably well into the tens of billions made by now. Your thesis is that in 50 years they'll be all gone. I don't think so.

      Twenty years ago any serious laptop had a "parallel port" for connecting a printer. That seems crazy now right? But the reason there isn't a parallel port on your laptop is not, strictly, just because nobody plugs a laptop into a printer in 2015, it's because even if you're a crazy person who wants to do that, you buy a cheap Parallel to USB adaptor, plug that in, and plug the printer into that. Done. The parallel port is "gone" but if you do need one it's available from your nearest decent electronics store and it probably will be for another fifty years, because why not.

      People freaked out about a "dark age" are always the idiots who rush to jump onto every new fad. Sure, if you took your photos with the new "FooCorp LifeTime Web Picturiser" then in six months you'll find out FooCorp were bought by Uber, to form a division that makes plastic dog toys, and a week later every single one of its employees left, and all your photos were deleted. But that's not because "digital caused a dark age" it's because you're an idiot and trusted a fly-by-night corporation to protect things you cared about.

      If you use boring, tried and tested standards like I did, nothing goes wrong. Even if in fifty years JFIF JPEG is regarded as literally the supidest format that ever existed and no-one has owned a device that created them for 45 years, the ASCII text source code of the IJG's libjpeg will still exist and that turns them into rectangles of coloured pixels to view. I still have my photographs.

      And those standards exist for audio, video, still images, text ... plenty for what you want to do.

    3. Re:to hell with 1,000,000 years How about 40? by hey! · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Forty years is easy, if you don't insist on instant-access convenience. Print your data onto low acid paper and store in a fireproof cabinet. Either (a) people will still be using computers in 40 years, in which case they'll no doubt have scanners and OCR OR civilization as we know it will have collapsed and boy will you be glad you have hard copy.

      As for a million years, I think the DNA idea is terrible. While there have been instances of DNA as old as 700,000 years being sequenced, the horse bone used to sequence that genome was recovered from ancient permafrost -- almost ideal conditions. If there is unexpected warmth, water or air exposure, then your DNA molecules will start to get manky fast.

      But we can look to dinosaurs for the answer. What we have of them is mineralized bone. I've personally helped a paleontologist reconstruct a triceratops skull, so I've seen it up close. You can still see the pattern of veins preserved on the surface of the frill. So some kind of engraved mineral might be the way to go. Encoding data on noble metal plates or synthetic gems would seem more promising.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:to hell with 1,000,000 years How about 40? by allo · · Score: 1

      The next generation will not hear the sound of their childhood.
      The recorders will have uploaded it to the cloud and make it hard to download it, to sell more ads on the cloud pages. The company will finally have been bankrupt or just stopped providing the service. The parents will either not have any access or the option to backup, which they did not use or understand.

      "Offline" devices may have the data, which is locked via some DRM scheme to prevent the competition to use the data in their devices. The key to it will be lost as well.

      brave new world.

    5. Re:to hell with 1,000,000 years How about 40? by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      What I do have to aim for is brain dead easy use. The average computer user has went down in education dramatically, so if you extrapolate that out it will be even worse in 40 years.

      The chances that a normal person in the future that will understand what the 25 reams of paper in that box are for, because the top pages that explain it will disappear, are very very slim.

      I actually am looking at getting some 45rpm records made and including a fold up record player where you have to spin the record by your finger. This bypasses all future technology problems but will limit playback to only a few times before the recording is destroyed.

      http://kellianderson.com/blog/...

      Basically stealing this persons idea. I still have not found a technology proof method of sending video ahead in time.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  11. Pfft....so obvious by meglon · · Score: 2

    The obvious answer is storing it in Twinkies.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  12. Genetic memory.... by drew_92123 · · Score: 2

    I wonder if this could one day lead to a form of genetic memory containing all the basic knowledge that a person would normally receive in school through the first few years of college... if given to an entire population we could rid ourselves of the need to study for many years to become proficient at basic concepts... perhaps allowing the human race to evolve into something greater.

    1. Re:Genetic memory.... by narcc · · Score: 1

      What strange confusion of ideas has lead you to consider such a ridiculous notion?

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    2. Re:Genetic memory.... by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      What strange confusion of ideas has lead you to consider such a ridiculous notion?

      My money's on marijuana.

  13. Long term storage by RY · · Score: 2

    Already done, stones and a hamer!

  14. Not that stupid, actually by manu0601 · · Score: 2

    After looking at TFA, it looks less stupid to me than it did at once.

    Indeed DNA changes very easily, mutations and viruses are common. But here they want to store DNA at temperature where biological interaction does not happen anymore. We are left with just mutations from radiation and replication errors, but that may be covered by DNA built-in repair systems. Hence perhaps it makes sense after all.

    1. Re:Not that stupid, actually by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      You just have to warm the DNA from time to time, so that biology recovers the mutations you may have caught while frozen. And then you freeze again.

      For DRAM we used to talk about refreshing the memory, here it is the samen but with warming at longer intervals

    2. Re:Not that stupid, actually by allo · · Score: 1

      and why do you want to stop interaction at all, if you warm it up to allow (random) interactions? Either it does only repair itself all the time, then why freeze it? Or it does repair and reorganiziation with information loss, then it does at the warm intervals do both as well.

    3. Re:Not that stupid, actually by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      Freezing protects from chemical and biological (hint: virus) induced mutations. If you want DNA to remain unchanged, you freeze. Scientists do this routinely with -80C fridges.

    4. Re:Not that stupid, actually by allo · · Score: 1

      And why do you warm it up?

    5. Re:Not that stupid, actually by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      You warm it up to resume chemical and therefore biological activity. This will be required to replicate the DNA, repair it (but as it was frozen and shielded from radiation, it should not be damaged) and probably to also to read it.

      On the read point: most of the method we have to read DNA are chemical or biological. There are also physical methods, which may not require a warm up: for instance you can open the DNA double helix and measure the force you need for that. Since G-C and A-T do not have the same count of hydrogen bonds, resistance to mechanical opening depends on G-C/A-T ratio in a sequence. But I do not know if such method is applicable here.

    6. Re:Not that stupid, actually by allo · · Score: 1

      Hmm, interesting. I just doubted, if the denerating and the repair/replicate process can be seperated and have the same speed (slow/fast depending on the temperature)

    7. Re:Not that stupid, actually by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      Well, only three kind of mutations causes comes to my mind:

      • - Radiation: happens at any temperature, but you get protected by a shield
      • - Chemical agent: as I understand, it derails biological processes, hence it happens at same temperature as repair/replicate
      • - Biological agent (virus): same as chemical agent.
  15. Hubris by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Nobody's going to need your data in 1 million years, considering that by then humanity will have been extinct for about 999,900 years.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  16. MOD PARENT UP by n3r0.m4dski11z · · Score: 1

    yup, and in the 90s the message was "live in harmony future children". Nowadays i'm sure it would translate to "buy the new iphone 8"

    --
    -
  17. Panspermia by Iamthecheese · · Score: 2

    Some real science has been done on DNA data storage as relates to evidence of panspermia. The theory goes that if intelligent life deliberately seeded the universe it may have used DNA or RNA sequences that could be decoded into a message. So far science's tendency toward conservatism has prevented anyone from coming out and saying it but I think available evidence is more than sufficient reason for optimism and intense study.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  18. Re:"Library of Alexandria" Pie Recipe ..for Disast by Required+Snark · · Score: 2

    Scientology.

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
  19. Og Say DNA Not Do by Greyfox · · Score: 1

    Og just paint Ogwina and deer on cave wall. Or carve in stone. Og find carving in stone always works.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  20. The obvious choice... by SeaFox · · Score: 1

    Post it on Facebook.

    What? Everyone's always talking about how once your give your information to Facebook they'll keep it a million years.

  21. Re:Long term storage? by WillKemp · · Score: 1

    It seems some cave paintings are older.

  22. Signal to space by ihana · · Score: 1

    Signal your data to space in many directions, later invent faster travelling then light and collect your data.

  23. First Check Apples for Ancient Knowledge? by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 1

    Maybe we should try to read the apples that we have already and see if there is any knowledge already in them? It would suck if they already were imbedded by the ancient astronauts with the secrets of FTL drives, cancer cures, the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, etc... and we overwrote them with Bieber.

    --

    Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

    Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    1. Re:First Check Apples for Ancient Knowledge? by mcswell · · Score: 1

      Or our "junk DNA", which is doubtless compressed information.

  24. Storing Wikipedia data in Apple DNA... by cob666 · · Score: 1

    I wonder if he'll just store some of the core data?

    --
    Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
  25. Not at all by allo · · Score: 1

    Who needs it.

  26. There does not need to be data degration by allo · · Score: 1

    First: Our DNA contains a lot of "useless" information, which is not used or changed. Nobody knows what it does, maybe it just lost the sequence on the active part of the DNA, which activates it.

    Second: Don't think of the DNA as a pure data store. Think of it as an program. Then write a program, which reencodes itself into each new instance in a robust manner. Your child may have mutated the data, but its organism reads the data and reconstruct it from some redundancy and writes unmutated data into the DNA of your grandchildren. Again with redundancy and repair program.