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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the back-to-clay-tablets-are-we? dept.

Martin Kunze wants to gather a snapshot of all of human knowledge onto plates and bury it away in the world's oldest salt mine.

In Hallstatt, Austria, a picturesque village nestled into a lake-peppered region called Salzkammergut, Kunze has spent the past four years engraving images and text onto hand-sized clay squares. A ceramicist by trade, he believes the durability of the materials he plies gives them an as-yet unmatched ability to store information. Ceramic is impervious to water, chemicals, and radiation; it's emboldened by fire. Tablets of Sumerian cuneiform are still around today that date from earlier than 3000 B.C.E.

"The only thing that can threaten this kind of data carrier is a hammer," Kunze says.

[...] The goal of the project, which he calls the Memory of Mankind, is to build up a complete, unbiased picture of modern societies. The sheets will be stored along with the larger tablets in a vault 2 km inside Hallstatt's still-active salt mine. If all goes according to plan, the vault will naturally seal over the next few decades, ready for a curious future generation to open whenever it's deemed necessary.

To Kunze, this peculiar ambition is more than a courtesy to future generations. He believes the age of digital information has lulled people into a false sense that memories are forever preserved. If today's digital archives disappear—or, in Kunze's view, when they do—he wants to make sure there's a real, physical record to mark our era's place in history.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:06PM (#455998)

    The goal of the project, which he calls the Memory of Mankind, is to build up a complete, unbiased picture of modern societies.

    Unbiased? Good luck with that.

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:57PM (#456083)

    It is possible that the reptilian bloodlines are planning a wipe-out of all electronically-stored data some time in the future. Then of course they will have this "unbaised" source of data (containing their version of historic knowledge). This is called re-writing of history. Whoever controls the present controls the past.

    Stories like these are reported and advertised to put into the back of the mind of the listener/reader that such things are underway and to not fight any such future attempts.

    The way we can defeat these plots is to plot to overthrow the reptilians and take back control. Drain the swamp.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:17PM (#456106)

    Unbiased? Good luck with that.

    Nothing to worry about, the job was subcontracted to Fox News.