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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.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:05PM
What language will he be using.? Languages change all the time and quite quickly too (in Human history terms)
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:54PM
From TFA:
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:52PM
What language will the instructions be written in?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:25PM
Why, Universal Galactic, you silly rabbit. ;-)
Does it really matter?
Historians/linguists/archeologists seem to have a pretty good track record for figuring old/dead/obscure languages. I think the future ones will also do fine.
Even if we get tossed back to the Stone Age, we will sooner or later advance again. If not, this whole subject will not matter at all to our descendents.(what you don't know about is seemingly irrelevant to you, until/unless it bites you in the ass)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:58PM
Historians/linguists/archeologists seem to have a pretty good track record for figuring old/dead/obscure languages.
Except for Linear A (or was it Linear B?).
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:19PM
If he were even remotely intelligent he would have some sort of Rosetta stone in included. Maybe take some widely known document that is likely to still exist in the future like the first few chapters of some bronze age religion's holy book and have them in the major languages of today like English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, as well as ancient Greek and Latin. Maybe to expand the available vocabulary and syntax also include copies of other documents who's text is likely to survive like the Magna Carta, US constitution, a couple of popular books. But why would someone who is undertaking a project like this ever think of such a thing. It is a simple elegant solution that would provide an easy solution. Additionally I would have a single tablet explaining exactly what they have uncovered with the same message in all of those languages, maybe have a few and try to ensure that they are among the first found by putting them on top of other piles.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:29PM
For example, a Rosetta Disk. [rosettaproject.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.