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Greetings, Children of the New World!

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11:07 / 25.01.06

That's not what I meant, elene. Your quote said that DVD readers may not exist in 50,000 years, and I was referring to the fact that the papers are already talking about the next storage and entertainment formats which will supersede DVDs soon.

12:46 / 25.01.06

Sorry, Loomis. I realised that just after I posted and felt very stupid. As I can't easily edit the post I just left it, should have posted again.

Yes, that's the big problem. The people involved in this KEO project presume that civilisation will progress, rather than collapse, over the next 50,000 years. So they see no problem, and I see no solution.

13:15 / 25.01.06

No worries.

50,000 years does seem an awfully long time though, doesn't it? Couldn't they just start off with 100-200 years and then re-send it?

14:08 / 25.01.06

They say it's been roughly 50,000 years since man first managed abstract thought. I imagine they do foresee various problems for mankind, e.g. at least one more incredibly destructive war. They hope we'll have made considerable progress in that time, but they also fear we may have forgotten much of our past by then. And they want to remind us. I guess.

Concerning sending it again and again, they probably fear we'd forget to send it at some stage, during a crisis, or we'd just lose interest. It's also more expensive to send it again and again.

What attracted me to this was the idea that a great deal of data could be kept safe in space for such long periods. Sadly we can't seem to design a reading device for the data that will also remain functional.

sdv (non-human)

15:07 / 25.01.06

elene

You are overexcited by very recent technologies which may never stabilize.

Let me recommend painting and books - some copies of the former are older than the first industrial revolution and copies of the second are over a thousand years old.

I'm not sure how long it took for 'books' to stabalize as a technology.

The comments are to fixated on the net rather than the information you want to store...

s

15:35 / 25.01.06

Maybe, sdv, but I suspect you're underestimating the length of time we're talking about, its corrosiveness, and the amount of information we might wish to preserve. I'd want them to receive all our science and all our history at the very least.

solid~liquid onwards

15:01 / 26.01.06

The best info to keep would be how to run a society sustainably, because too many people not being sustainable is a big factor in possible environmental collapse.

A well insulated house with a stand alone energy system is a good way to go.

Growing food may be a problem if the weather gets super freaky. I vote for underground farms powered by wind turbines or/and geothermal energy (electricity for lights). I dont like it underground, so i wouldnt want to live there.

Tryphena Absent

01:53 / 27.01.06

elene I think sdv is probably referring to permanent paper, which has generally been agreed as the best solution to storing information. That is how they intend to store the location of buried radioactive material.

All we really need to do is stick the paper in a copper lined bag and stick it in a properly refurbished pyramid. The oldies are the goodies.

08:47 / 27.01.06

I'm sorry, sdv, I was aware there is special (alkali buffered) permanent paper guaranteed for hundreds of years and no doubt good for many thousands, but I've never heard it claimed to be good for such long periods and had presumed its not.

Thanks, Nina, that's likely the best solution.

12:47 / 30.01.06

Now I'm worried that the satellite might come back at at an inopportune moment and the people of the future will miss it.

My brain frustrates me. Why must I worry about people in the future missing the satellite of information rather than more nowly things?

sdv (non-human)

00:40 / 31.01.06

Thanks N and you were right I was thinking in these terms. As far as I can tell it's the nearest thing to a reasonable longterm storage solution available.

Of course you'd need something like a rosetta stone eventually because the problem will always be translation... See for example 'The Decipherment of Linear B' by (John Chadwick). Which is actually the nearest thing to an equivalent that i can think of...

sdv (non-human)

00:47 / 31.01.06

elene

actually the 'science' issue is interesting, because it occurs to me that that this would be least useful aspect of current knowledge.

I was reading something by Anne Querrain about the difficulties of event recent architectural historians to understand that Gothic cathedrals did not have architects or designers - which makes me think that they would be unable to understand quite fundamental ways that that our 'science' reflects our society. Ah well bit off topic it's true ... but it does suggest that good social history might be very important amongst the rosetta stone....

One thing no mysticism or religion - they'd never believe it anyway... That we already know.

09:34 / 31.01.06

I agree social history is important and ought certainly be included. I suspect there'd be a good deal more controversy over what exactly ought to be said in those documents though. I think scientists would quickly settle on some version of items such as Feynman's Lectures on Physics.

What I fear most about passing science on is not that no one will comprehend it, but rather that no one will get the opportunity to. I fear this whole project would fall under the control of church or state, it's potential understood only as a threat to the status quo, and never again see the light of day.

This is probably nonsense. There would surely be people of a scientific inclination among the priests and bureaucrats, and they would eventually find a way to access it, and then some crisis would eventually bring it among the people.

Just because medieval builders did not possess the physics and mathematics they needed in order to safely construct large projects does not mean they were incapable of understanding that science. On the contrary, they obviously were, as a few generations later their descendents not only understood it, they'd discovered it for themselves. Perhaps I've misconstrued Anne Querrien's thesis?

02:55 / 21.03.06

Does anyone else think it's staggeringly arrogant to presume that leaving scientific knowlege behind for the survivors is obviously the right thing to do? It's the *scientific* developments of the last few hundred years that have brought us to the point where a global apocalypse is something we face as a real possibility - ruining our atmosphere, 'harnessing' the destructive power of the atom, building huge societies that run on non-renewable resources that will someday soon run out, etc.

Leaving records of our scientific progress in the hope that our descendants might 'rebuild' isn't such a hot idea, I think. But maybe by leaving detailed descriptions of how we made this mess our descendants will at least try a different path this time.

17:49 / 21.03.06

Leaving records of our scientific progress in the hope that our descendants might 'rebuild' isn't such a hot idea, I think. But maybe by leaving detailed descriptions of how we made this mess our descendants will at least try a different path this time.

Such detailed descriptions are part of the scientific record, Sina. As for you deciding science is bad for our descendants, live without it for a while first. Plough a half acre of land with a horse. Then consider how you plan to shoe and tackle that horse and how you're going to construct a plough, without science.

19:03 / 21.03.06

I'm not saying science is necessarily bad, elene, though it has led to some horrifying achievements. Ever advancing technological development shouldn't be the purpose of any future community next time (if there is a next time)- if the destructive tendencies of people haven't been sorted out, psychologically or spiritually, then technology will just lead to the same result again. I'm with Jung when he says that

'It is not that present-day man is capable of greater evil than the man of antiquity or the primitive. He merely has incomparably more effective means with which to realize his proclivity to evil.'

I agree with you that living without science is tough, but societies throughout history have developed tools and techniques to survive on the resources of their natural environment. Human ingenuity always finds a way.

19:10 / 21.03.06

(Re-reading my first post, I just want to add that I don't mean to call anybody on here arrogant - I meant the tendency of any culture without the benefit of hindsight or 'objectivity' to see its approach to the world as right.)

22:25 / 21.03.06

I was too aggressive, Sina. I start to bristle as soon as someone suggests that we can do without science. I think we must educate ourselves to learn from the past and to recognise conditions like “oil addiction” and work to counter them. Simply giving in to ourselves at every turn will indeed lead to our repeating our errors. Well, not with oil actually, because there won’t be much left, but in general. I think that’s a cultural problem. I think prohibition is the worst possible solution and keeping knowledge from our descendants is downright reprehensible.

18:22 / 22.03.06

the solution to the nuclear dump site, if I'm not mistaken, was to establish a priesthood (for lack of a better term) to keep the knowledge over the long haul (since most of us have trouble keeping this afternoon in sight).

if you want to communicate with an earth being, use its points of reference (like the pyramids). The sun's journey through equinoxes and solstices, the spin of the stars, etc...

keep in mind the season's reverse every 13,000 years or so.

besides, it's pretty arrogant to assume that our particular civilisation has much to share with a civilisation that's at the starting phases. What do we have to share beyond the catalogue of our collective calamity (which we call history)?

so much of our highly-developed skills are technology-dependent, and are thus pretty useless once the end's arrived. Microsurgery? Sure, try it without an autoclave.

best to leave the survivors to suss it out for themselves. They can't possibly have a worse go at it than we have.

--not jack

19:21 / 22.03.06

It's not our science that's destroying this world, it's the greedy, irresponsible way we're used it. Do you know anything about living from hand to mouth without modern technology, jack? You'd rather people live through millennia like the last four in either abject poverty or under the heel of some warlord while they try to scrape back the knowledge we've ever so painfully acquired in that time, though they'll only have a fraction of the resources we had while we were doing it?

19:26 / 22.03.06

I'm scraping enough as it is -

where on earth did you get your historical flavours from?

--not jack

19:35 / 22.03.06

What are historical flavours, jack? If they're poverty and warlords, famine and an early grave then I got them from history. Any book not dealing exclusively with the pursuits of the ruling elite at any time in our history.

20:31 / 22.03.06

hey elene - I had a more lengthy response that was deleted - sorry for the abrupt shorthand above.

elene queried:
What are historical flavours, jack? If they're poverty and warlords, famine and an early grave then I got them from history.

and how do you seperate historical poverty, warlords, famine and early graves from contemporary ones? We haven't solved these problems, we've just given them new titles.

--not jack

22:25 / 22.03.06

You're right, jack, but we could solve those problems today, had we the will. We only can do that now though because of our science, but unfortunately the only problems we have solved are the scientific ones. We've still got the warlords, we still cheat and exploit.

22:34 / 22.03.06

I think that some of the innovations that are worth sharing aren't worth a damn once the supporting infrastructure collapses.

microsurgery, for example.

I think a priesthood to keep wikipedia in the hearts and minds of humanity ever onwards.

--not jack, not entirely unserious

23:06 / 22.03.06

I'd be concerned with passing on basic mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering and material science, and of course history and literature, and ... but above all things like architecture, like civil engineering rather than art, smelting and metallurgy, agricultural science, and the rather simple geometry and calculus and physics needed to do these things. Medicine too, and a lot more I'm sure, but actually very basic knowledge that we nevertheless in many cases only got to in the last hundred years or so.

Can you see any benefit for anyone in forcing our descendants to dwell in architecturally unstable buildings, or letting them die of a flu, a sceptic wound or childbirth, or a thousand other things one doesn’t understand just so? You’re right that the more complicated things they can work out for themselves. I just wouldn’t want them wasting themselves rediscovering the wheel, or Pythagoras‘s theorem, or the calculus.

I'd rather it were all written down in many copies spread all over the place than trust any organisation to maintain it alone.

00:51 / 23.03.06

elene typed:
Can you see any benefit for anyone in forcing our descendants to dwell in architecturally unstable buildings, or letting them die of a flu, a sceptic wound or childbirth, or a thousand other things one doesn’t understand just so?

I think I give us more credit than you do.

Maybe *we* don't understand these particular details, because in large part our society is so specialized as to distance us from the very basics that we require in order to remain alive.

like producing one's own food, for example. Any idea what kind of soil, heat, moisture a tomato plant needs? That's a useful titbit, and we haven't added a drastic amount to our understanding of the tomato - maybe just the number of people who have access to the information.

how to build a plow. There's another one, which we managed to sort out 13000 years ago or so.

My point is that much of what our particular civilisation has to offer is only really valuable in the context of our civilisation, and that it is way arrogant to presume that it is of universal importance. (we've added lots of facts, but that's another thread).

We've had the basics figured out a long time ago. It's the interference with the basics that keeps making a muck of things. We can make more food than we need, but someone keeps insisting on locking it up.

if there's one message to pass along, it would be: live in peace, prepare for war.

Living in paradise is all well and good until the barbarians at the gate come and eat you.

I'm wondering what information would have benefitted us in helping avoid the global apocalypse.

"never trust someone who wants you to see them smile all the time."

--not jack

17:22 / 23.03.06

not to let my devil's advocacy derail a valuable thread.

what have we created that is unique to us, and worth sharing with anyone else?

how can communication through unseen obstacles be facilitated?

--not jack

18:55 / 26.03.06

how about including

"how stonehenge works"

or

"how to raise blueberries: an illustrated guide"

or

"the constellations: a connect-the-dots reader"

or

"the problems with scientific-materialism."

Any cultural survival guide worth its weight in paper has got to be something that can tell *us* (the here and now people, people) how to survive the coming apocalypse.

unless you feel that you're doomed.

--not jack

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