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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: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:04PM

    by Unixnut (5779) on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:04PM (#455997)

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

    And how does he intend to do that? Considering so much of our history and memory is biased based on perceptions and historic context. Look at history, most of it is biased, or challenged, or (depend on which country/nation/group) completely different. Even modern history, events that happened a few months ago.

    The only thing you could store in a completely unbiased way are maths and the sciences (and even there, you get disagreement, bias and arguments).

    If the goal of this project is really for a "complete, unbiased picture", then it is dead before it even started. They will get stuck in a quagmire they will never get out of.

    Alternatively, they can just provide "their opinion" on what is an unbiased picture, which in itself is biased and not representative of "mankind", thereby breaking one of the core points of the exercise in the first place.

    Maybe they can store each and every variation on a theme/event/occurrence, but I think they will find that their storage requirements may double or triple, if not higher multiples of that. Plus it would get complex really quickly for anyone who later reads it, as they will have maybe 10 versions of an event, all different.

    • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:18PM

      by opinionated_science (4031) on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:18PM (#456005)

      my random thoughts.

      Unbiased? A great deal of fluff surely. I'd be happy with finding published articles!!

      Oh and from the recesses of my movie bank...

      "Here we have the fifteen....*crash*...Ten commandments". (Mel Brooks)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:36PM (#456011)

        It was supposed to be one commandment: "Don't be a dick."

        Moses just had to be a dick and demand ten bullet points.

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:34PM

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:34PM (#456146) Journal

      Alternatively, they can just provide "their opinion" on what is an unbiased picture, which in itself is biased and not representative of "mankind", thereby breaking one of the core points of the exercise in the first place.

      While I agree that it's impossible for anyone to be completely without bias (and I modded you up for that insight), I think it's a bit reflective of our current events for people to fail to acknowledge the possibility of LESS bias. For example, everyone has different perspectives on the so-called "Golden Age of News" back in the mid-20th century. Was it free from bias? Of course not. Are there problems created by having just a few major networks determining what America knows about and shaping that discourse? Sure. Was it an anomaly in news throughout history (which has basically had streaks of "yellow journalism" since it began with the dawn of the printing press)? Yes -- sensationalistic, biased news has been typical for news in most ages.

      BUT... with all that, I think it's still possible to acknowledge that the news producers of that era tried a bit to remove obvious bias and tried a bit not to insert intentional bias most of the time.

      So, it may not be possible for an archive to exist without any bias about history or human knowledge. But I don't think that makes the project flawed from the start. It may be idealistic, but it is possible to at least TRY to represent things without overt bias, and when different incongruous understandings are popular, to try to represent a pluralistic perspective.

      Plus it would get complex really quickly for anyone who later reads it, as they will have maybe 10 versions of an event, all different.

      Welcome to the world of historiography. Historians deal with this problem all the time. Perhaps one significant problem with most people's understanding of history is that we don't often acknowledge how much has to be reconstructed and how hard it is.

  • (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.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by KritonK on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:10PM

    by KritonK (465) on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:10PM (#455999)

    for a curious future generation to open whenever it's deemed necessary

    It is quite likely that the time, when it's deemed necessary, will be the time when all human knowledge has been lost, e.g., due to a natural of man-made catastrophe. This knowledge will probably include the location of this buried archive, which will thus be unavailable, when it is most needed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:14PM (#456003)

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

      It's hammer time, Saddam!

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:46PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:46PM (#456016) Journal

      We should look for the previous archive. Or the repositories of the ancient aliens.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:54PM (#456017)

        Bad news. The alien knowledge repositories were tapped out after wi-fi was invented. It's why technological progression hasn't been progressing much lately. We're on our own again.

      • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:11PM

        by fritsd (4586) on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:11PM (#456026) Journal

        here you go! [gutenberg.org] (Gilgamesj)

        I think the ruins of Nineveh are gone, now that Daesh is done with them. What luck that these clay tablets were dug out before they got to them.

        If you read the translation, you go: "WTF was the translator stoned or what?". It shows what an enormous gulf of time and culture there is between Hammurabi's time and our time.
        Plus chunks have broken off the tablets over the millenia, of course.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:13PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:13PM (#456044)

        The previous archive at Alexandria was torched by radical Christianity. :(

        • (Score: 4, Informative) by gidds on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:27PM

          by gidds (589) on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:27PM (#456048)

          Apparently [todayifoundout.com] not [wikipedia.org].

          --
          [sig redacted]
          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:42PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:42PM (#456078)

            1st link

            We do know that one of the rare historic mathematicians, philosophers, and astronomers who was female, Hypatia, was brutally murdered by a religious mob in Alexandria around this time (in 415 A.D.)

            :(

            • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:13PM

              by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:13PM (#456131)

              Way to completely grab one sentence out of context to fuel your preconceived notions.

              Legend has it that Theophilius, Patriarch of Alexandria in 391 A.D., began destroying pagan temples in the name of Christianity. The classical “pagan” scrolls contained in the library would have been a point of contention, as was the Serapeum temple attached to the library. If Theophilius destroyed a library in Alexandria, though, it is thought it was probably the “daughter library’ set up by Ptolemy III which contained far fewer scrolls than the historic great library. We do know that one of the rare historic mathematicians, philosophers, and astronomers who was female, Hypatia, was brutally murdered by a religious mob in Alexandria around this time (in 415 A.D.) demonstrating some of the strife between certain scholars and the religious in the region, though many scholars today think her death had more to do with her being caught up in political events than specifically her stance on Christianity.

              The story about Caliph Omar is almost certainly made up. In 645 A.D., Omar conquered Egypt and supposedly burned the books in the library because they were not in line with the Koran’s teachings. Again, if Omar did burn a library it was probably the one rebuilt at the site of the original daughter library. Most historians think that this story was probably invented in the 12th century, and as with all stories that emerge long after they were said to take place, it should be considered with a grain of salt.

              And from the Wikipedia page:

              Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria: Julius Caesar's fire during his civil war in 48 BC; the attack of Aurelian in AD 270 – 275; the decree of Coptic Pope Theophilus of Alexandria in 391 AD; and the Muslim conquest of Egypt in (or after) AD 642.[2]

              So yeah, it was definitely and only the Christians.

              --
              "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:55PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:55PM (#456299)

                So yeah, it was definitely and only the Christians.

                Agreed. I mean, who else would want to burn books? Seems like the Christian thing to do. Remember, God hates Flags, and Words, especially words in books.

                • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 20 2017, @03:08AM

                  by tangomargarine (667) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:08AM (#456353)

                  Good thing ISIS isn't running around destroying any history they don't like.

                  Oh wait

                  --
                  "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:12PM (#456001)

    emboldened by fire

    Flame bait news is three days late.

  • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:05PM

    by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:05PM (#456022) Journal

    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

      by aclarke (2049) on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:54PM (#456059) Homepage

      From TFA:

      Kunze aims to expand the project, to copy research, books, and newspaper editorials from around the world—along with instructions for the languages needed to read them.

      • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:52PM

        by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:52PM (#456218)

        What language will the instructions be written in?

        • (Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:25PM

          by rts008 (3001) on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:25PM (#456264)

          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

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:58PM (#456302)

            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

      by Kromagv0 (1825) on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:19PM (#456094) Homepage

      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

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:29PM (#456141) Journal

        If he were even remotely intelligent he would have some sort of Rosetta stone in included.

        For example, a Rosetta Disk. [rosettaproject.org]

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:19PM

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:19PM (#456029) Journal

    bad: self destruct, or better, actively help satanic forces destroy your own civilization.
    worse: make sure future civilizations know all details.

    I say, leave the mt. rushmore thing standing, and call it a day.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:12PM (#456089)

      worse: make sure future civilizations know all details.

      Why? What's wrong with at least giving future civilizations the chance to learn from our mistakes, if we don't learn ourselves?

      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:29PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:29PM (#456112)

        Maybe the Giant Cockroaches will be less selfish and self-destructive. But I'm not sure Evolution will ever correct that in humans.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:17PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:17PM (#456136)

          We should at least try.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:34PM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:34PM (#456145) Journal

          That still doesn't mean there's any harm in providing the information. In the worst case, it doesn't help. But it's not as if they'd come back to us with time machines in order to conquer us, right? (And if they'd do that, they can collect first-hand information using their time machines, so the provided information doesn't matter for that either).

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:23PM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:23PM (#456047) Journal

    Sounds like a slight exaggeration to me... I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be possible to put all available knowledge about... lets say... Lego, including pictures, on a stack of ceramic squares small enough to fit into the mines. It has to remain human readable, after-all, otherwise the future historians might not know how to build a suitable reading device.

    --
    Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by aclarke on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:59PM

    by aclarke (2049) on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:59PM (#456062) Homepage

    I'm a little disappointed in this community's response to this article. Here's basically a regular guy trying to do something good for humankind, that will last. All most of the commenters so far have been able to do is post snide comments about how his idea isn't perfect, or can't contain all human knowledge, etc. So what? This is one guy with a big idea, trying to do something with his life that's beyond the ordinary. Why is that something we have to scoff at?

    Good for Mr. Kunze. He's not going to get "all human knowledge", but if his efforts last a few millennia (and if humans do), if this trove is ever dug up it could prove invaluable. That's a lot of ifs, but at least he's trying to do something special.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:15PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:15PM (#456090)

      Welcome to modern America. What you're observing shows why our culture and civilization is self-destructing. If humanity is lucky, other nations will survive the impending disaster, and rebuild.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:46PM (#456180)

        Not thinking far enough. If humanity is lucky, there won't be any nations, and all humans are hybrid, many-shaped things, containing plant, man and machine parts... Which would remove the need to rebuild anything ever and the need to have external data storage?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:03PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:03PM (#456063) Journal

    Fear of loss never gets old. This theme of the Lost Knowledge of the Ancients has been flogged for many stories-- Indiana Jones and Snowcrash come to mind. More general loss and decline is all over history. We know of many ancient civilizations, and they are all fallen, their languages, cultures, customs, and religions all forgotten and gone, and in many cases, good riddance, as they are full of barbarism, savagery, and ignorance. Good to know as much as we can about them, avoid their mistakes, not good to practice many of their customs such as human sacrifice, or those of their agricultural techniques that ruin the land, or their hostility and warlike behavior. As in, Carthago Delenda Est. It's only through archeology we've been able to rediscover as much as we have.

    Oh well, it's still a nice project, for its unusualness if nothing else. No doubt we can make far stronger and thinner ceramic tablets than the ancients could, but tablets are still an awfully large format by today's standards. How'd the Encyclopedia Galactica turn out, in Asimov's Foundation stories? Right, it was a trick to keep some narrow minded leaders preoccupied until the time was right to dump the project. "The Encyclopedia is, and always has been, a fraud."

    What strikes me is how pitifully short civilizations have been. Roman civilization lasted about 2200 years, though with radical change. The Byzantine Empire was very different from the Roman Republic, not least in their effort to stay relevant by dumping their pagan religion for Christianity, plus moving the capital from Rome and giving the city up to the barbarians. What's the oldest civilization that is still alive today? China? India? 2000 years, long though that is, is far too short for an interstellar civilization. We can't make or launch a space probe or space ship that needs 100,000 years to do its mission. Assuming such a long lasting probe could be created, by the time it reaches its destination, the civilization that sent it may be long gone and the probe forgotten. In principle, knowledge of such a probe and the means to communicate with it can survive that long, but will it? That's a problem worth working on.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:04PM

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:04PM (#456155) Journal

      Fear of loss never gets old.

      While this is true, I do think there is at least some record issues that have already come up with some historians I know personally who work on recent topics. For historians of centuries ago, there is always a paucity of information. They struggle to find out what they can from ANY document that survives. Sometimes just a random inventory list that was made by an unknown person for some unknown reason is a clue to an essential historical find... because most things were lost or repurposed or whatever.

      Not so for historians who work with the 20th century. Obviously things were lost there too, but SO MUCH was kept. So many documents typewritten and filed. So many letters put in folders in desks and cabinets. Historians who work on medieval stuff or even stuff from a couple hundred years ago tend to joke about "how easy" it is for modern historians. Want to know something about some famous person? Go to a library where they donated their "papers" and you'll often find a room full of documents with more detail than a medievalist could ever dream of about even the most famous people in Europe centuries ago.

      BUT -- all of that changed in the past 25 years or so. There is a "digital dark age" of records that happened during the transition. Instead of filing paper copies, people just had MS Word documents on a computer, which then failed or was tossed the trash. Or they were kept on floppy disks that decayed. Or whatever. I have been an officer of a group founded in 1991, and we have basically no extant records from the first 10 years of the organization. Nobody even remembers who all the officers were. Yes, it isn't a large group, but with no effort to pass things along electronically and put them in a centralized "archive," things were simply lost.

      I know a historian who is working on a project on a major figure who died in the past couple decades. They are encountering the same issue -- yes, there are "papers" of all kinds from decades ago, even written drafts of documents preserved, so you can trace the detailed evolution of the person's thought. But then basically everything stops around 1985 when this person got a computer. There are some occasionally written records, and some stuff toward the end was preserved, but for all of the current concern that "Everything you post on Facebook could live with you forever," there are also millions of records lost irretrievably every day.

      I'm not necessarily saying that all of this should be preserved. There's a lot of unimportant ephemera. But we're as a culture are NOT being consistent about electronic preservation. Stuff sticks around in old formats that can no longer be read and on media that will decay. Librarians and archivists are working on solutions to this, but it's interesting how digital data is likely going to result in a sort of "dark age" in certain types of documented history beginning sometime in the 1980s until we sort it all out.

      What strikes me is how pitifully short civilizations have been.

      Just a random thought, but what always blows my mind is the concept of ancient archaeologists. And yes, there were some. I remember reading an account of some ruler close to the fall of the Assyrian Empire (ca. 600 BCE) who was interested in "antiquities" and had some giant stone monument dug up, transported, and displayed in his city -- this was a monument originally erected ca. 3000 BCE. That is, this ruler in the ancient Near East was looking at a lost piece of a civilization that was as long ago for him as he is to us. Time often seems to "compress" as we think backwards in history, because we tend to know less and less about it. But even within recorded human civilization, time can seem quite vast when you think about.

      But obviously you're right that this means little in terms of the vastness of space and the time it would likely take to travel it.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:06PM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:06PM (#456228) Journal

        I find digital media a Godsend. A whole wall of books can fit on one SD card, and computers can search through that material for whatever I want far, far faster than I can. The only reason I keep various paper items is fear of copyright extremism. I'd dump my old print magazine collections in a heartbeat if I could be sure they'd always be freely available online. Nevertheless, I've been dumping them. Just put a batch of early 1980s Scientific Americans in the recycling bin last night, and the 1970s are next. I tried to sell them online, only to confirm what I'd been hearing from everyone on that subject. Old magazines aren't worth spit. Costs far more in shipping to deliver them than they're worth.

        Sadly, our public libraries have not been allowed to take full advantage of digitization. If I want to look at old magazine issues, I ought to be able to just browse to a library website and call them up. I shouldn't have to keep a private collection. Takes lots of room I really do not have. And that's what the library is for! I can do that for really old items, and it's fantastic. Found scans of the papers of Euler (a famous 18th century mathematician) online, all conveniently organized with a numbering system. There's more. Euler wrote his papers in Latin, and I feared I'd have to see what Google's translate could do with them. But modern scholars have put together excellent English translations of everything and made the translations freely available as well.

        The digital dark ages would be less dark if copyright law had been radically reformed decades ago. Frequent format changes have played their part, but I suspect copyright law's part is bigger than appreciated. In the process of building his library, it would be great if Mr. Kunze could win more digital freedoms for us all.

        • (Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday January 20 2017, @08:12AM

          by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Friday January 20 2017, @08:12AM (#456438)

          SD cards use copy protection for recordable media with device revocation.

          ..which probably just reinforces your point.

  • (Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:36PM

    by MrNemesis (1582) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:36PM (#456148)

    Last time I heard of a similar project [theinfosphere.org], it nearly resulted in the destruction of the universe...

    --
    "To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:15PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:15PM (#456283) Journal

    Wouldn't it make more sense to put such an archive on the moon along with a giant sign, visible from Earth, that says, "Giant Archive of all human knowledge ever here?" Yes, given several million years meteorite strikes could take that out, too, but if civilization doesn't build itself back up before then it's just not gonna.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday January 20 2017, @08:07PM

      by urza9814 (3954) on Friday January 20 2017, @08:07PM (#456673) Journal

      Wouldn't it make more sense to put such an archive on the moon along with a giant sign, visible from Earth, that says, "Giant Archive of all human knowledge ever here?" Yes, given several million years meteorite strikes could take that out, too, but if civilization doesn't build itself back up before then it's just not gonna.

      Depends what your goal is. If your goal is just to maintain a historical records, that's fine I guess. If your goal is to help jump-start the new civilization, then that doesn't help them much. *We* would have trouble retrieving such an archive from the moon with our current tech...so by the time they can go get it, it'll be useless except as a curiosity. Plus getting it up there in the first place is gonna cost an arm and a leg...

      I'd say try to distribute the location, in one or two major world languages (English and Mandarin or something), as widely as possible. But avoid trying to put any huge permanent marker on the site itself. The idea being if they are able to discover it, either society hasn't collapsed *completely* (because they can still read the directions) and therefore they're likely to recognize the importance of the archive, or they're interested enough in history and archeology that they've been able to translate the location documents, which also should guarantee some basic understanding of the importance of the archive. You just don't want some stone age culture deciding that those tiles would make a good roof...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @12:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @12:46PM (#456498)

    We don't need knowledge anymore.