logoalt Hacker News

vkaku • today at 12:48 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Issue with storage is you need shelf stability without ongoing electrical/mechanical work refreshing data time to time. Masked ROMs and M-Discs are those two things which can really last a very long time; Floppies, Hard Disks, Solid State Storage and present day ROMs all require periodic costs, efforts and refreshes to keep them going (that means they can't be kept in storage and then re-opened in 30 years).

We also need a mechanism that outlasts that archival lifespan so how to read Discs or Masked ROMs and how to interpret them, also needs to be stored as well. Repairing electronics is a valuable skill that needs to be passed on across generations as well.

Keeping humans around seems to be the best bet, given how things are going, I wouldn't count on the present set of beings around to preserve any of this information that well either.

Replies

mapontosevenths • today at 1:48 PM

> Issue with storage is you need shelf stability without ongoing electrical/mechanical work refreshing data time to time.

For what? Nothing we do today will be even remotely important in 1,000 years. Any tiny fraction of a fraction that is important will have been copied thousands, millions, or billions of times into various formats.

  "I met a traveller from an antique land
  Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, 
  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
  And on the pedestal these words appear:
  "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away."
- Ozymandias - By Percy Bysshe Shelley
➕ show 1 reply