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Comment by theseatoms | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off-topic: Print is still far and away the best medium for archiving information for future generations.

Although paper, especially the paper commonly used in newsprint, is terrible for it. Ever try to archive newspapers without taking extra steps to preserve them? It's gone in a decade or two. Long-term archiving is a problem no matter what the medium.

I have books and newspaper from decades ago. They are still fine. No special treatment.

Some newsprint may last longer than others, but in general, newspapers turn yellow and become brittle after a fairly short period of time. That's why the US Constitution is stored in such an elaborate way, and why big libraries tend to have important and old papers/books stores in a secure vault, and keep newspaper archives on micro film. The Smithsonian has instructions on how to preserve newspaper, and reasons why it deteriorates so quickly: http://siarchives.si.edu/services/forums/collections-care-gu...

I saved some papers from 9/11 in a shoebox in a closet, and when I opened it 10 years later, some of the papers crumbled in my hands. Paper of any kind is fragile and easily damaged by humidity, weather, and fire. We give books and newspaper special treatment every day they're kept safe in our climate-controlled houses. If civilization came crashing down, these archives would be lost very quickly.

Unless it's in a landfill where even newspapers last well over 50 years still readable:

https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=qhYDD8joCbQC&lpg=PT574&o...

Digital is clearly the winner here from various perspectives but a bit fragile, but if we had to pick something that was especially solid and apocalypse proof, stone tablets would beat out print any day. Newspapers and books decay relatively quickly, are susceptible to fire, susceptible to flooding, etc. You can go to London and read the 2200 year old Rosetta Stone all you like after learning the basics of ancient Greek (like I did), which shouldn't be too tough for a native english speaker. Or if you're a real go-getter you can learn ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and read the pottery from Abydos which is about 5200 years old. Meanwhile, we just have to accept the losses at the famous burning of the library of Alexandria.

Newspapers just decades old are all but dust now. There's no lasting power in paper. Stone and clay tablets is where its at. From a more realistic perspective, we live in an age where every tinpot dictator can get nuclear weapons and every powerful nation has enough to end the world, so past ideas of human survival let alone knowledge survival may be a bit naive. There's probably nothing that will survive WWIII and there's no reason to think WWIII isn't going to happen eventually.

There are many kinds of paper. Cost is one of the factors in the matrix of trade-offs. Newspaper paper is almost at the extreme low end of the spectrum. There really is paper that could give you 1-2 centuries easily using a monochrome laser printer. Not as good as stone, but does not require windows update.

The problem is that fire and water will still destroy it. With digital, you can easily just have thousands of copies spread around various data centers and never have to worry about that. The low cost to copy and the ease of transfer are pretty big advantages here. And you get things like easy searching, perfect copies, etc as well.

Nitpick: fire and water will destroy digital copies too.

My point is that the fire in our Chicago datacenter is unfortunate but everything is trivially replicated to Seattle and London. A fire at a physical library usually means total loss of original works, many of which may not exist everywhere. Especially if we're considering "seed store" scenarios. Paper also takes a lot of space, so the amount of data you can store in a facility for x amount of cost will be much less, now you have to employ "curators" to decide whats important instead of just copying everything on the much cheaper digital medium.

> The problem is that fire and water will still destroy it.

Same for digital.

> With digital, you can easily just have thousands of copies spread around various data centers and never have to worry about that.

Same with print. Just replace "data centers" with "libraries".

> The low cost to copy and the ease of transfer are pretty big advantages here.

It's only low cost and easy if you assume the whole computing infrastructure is already available: electrical and networking grid(s), working equipment, compatible software, trained operators, etc. All of that is expensive and, for archival purposes, fragile.

> And you get things like easy searching, perfect copies, etc as well.

No arguments there, but these advantages have little to do with long-term preservation.

The best archival strategy is going to involve multiple types of media. Keep things available on the network for ease of access. Put important things on paper/parchment just in case. Mix in tape/film and other media as needed.

Exactly! With "digital copies" you don't even need to destroy them to render them useless. Just turn off the power!

Not only that, whose to say the program needed to read files from 1000 years ago are still available.

Huh? Hard drives, flash drives, and CD/DVD discs don't stop storing bits when you remove the power.

They don't stop storing bits but to make them useful there are a lot of prerequisites, unlike hard copies.

I agree with that but that isn't what you said in your original comment or maybe I misunderstood you.

You originally said "you don't even need to destroy them to render them useless. Just turn off the power!" I guess turning the lights off makes a book "useless".

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