The messages that survived civilisation's collapse
bbc.com
bbc.com
I imagine in 10,000 years some future explorers making their way into such a cavern and finding all of the knowledge of the present time like some sort of treasure.
Perhaps with a big engraving of the God Jeff Bezos engraved in the stone wall for eternity.
> For greater data density and integrity, most data was stored QR-encoded, and compressed. A human-readable index and guide found on every reel explains how to recover the data.The 02/02/2020 snapshot, consisting of 21TB of data, was archived to 186 reels of film by our archive partners Piql and then transported to the Arctic Code Vault, where it resides today.
That said, I think one big reason why the artifacts mentioned - Sumerians, Mayans, Egyptians, or even Vesuvius - were preserved was because they were lost; buried in the desert, overgrown in dense jungles, buried under volcanic rock and ash, etc.
For something to stand the test of time, it has to be lost. Al-Quaeda and ISIS have destroyed visible historic monuments and documents, for example, and some people in the US are advocating for the removal and burning of certain books as well.
So yeah, underground caves and hidden monuments would probably be best, although the collapse of society may take care of that as well.
Another option: Time capsules of data sent out into space in containers that can survive re-entry in thousands of years. Ideally with a lot of flashy light effects and a persistent smoke trail on re-entry.
Just think about the gender roles on display, a women attacks her husband and gloats that society will side with her. Not to mention the meta-layer, the celebrity worship that would compel someone to preserve this particular document of all things.
Interesting idea indeed! How to solve the issue that there is a ~70% chance the capsules will re-enter and fall into an ocean area?
Yes, exactly my point - we can very nicely control landings to within a meter today. How can we make a craft land with any precision say 2-5000 years in the future? It'll require a power source good for 5000 years, a computer that still operates flawlessly for 5000 years, fuel that doesn't evaporate or degrade for 5000 years, and a rocket engine system that will operate properly in 5000 years. Even reduce that spec to 1000 years, or just a 500 years, and I don't see how we get there with today's tech.
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-b...
Making millions of them would likely also make all the other problems go away. Wit a million copies, we can forget about the controlled re-entry. While around 700k of them will sink in the oceans, there should still be 300,000 that will fall on land.
As long as the initial orbits, drag profiles, heat absorbtion profiles/patterns, etc. are sufficiently randomized so they all truly re-enter in a random pattern, there should be no need for propellant, engines, power, or controlled re-entry.
I agree. Some of the people quoted in the article advocated writing on a monumental scale in order to preserve it, but I don't think that gives particularly good odds of preservation. To add to the examples you cite, the Georgia Guidestones were pretty much a modern experiment in preservation through monumentalism; they painted a monumental target on their backs right away, and ultimately ended up being destroyed this year.
The way to go is probably massive replication in a compact, durable medium.
I had never heard about this before. What an odd tale. It's a real-life story of people falling into FUD over something pretty innocuous.
Diamond would be even better. Maybe we are wearing the messages of an ancient civilization in the form of diamonds?
A thousand beautiful stone tablets are buried and sunk all around the world in multiple languages. The tablets announce the purpose of the experiment and share a series of dates and precise locations. In those places and times, a set of extremely sensitive sensors are set up to listen. If one is reasonably confident that the tablets will be discovered in a 1000 years, and if there is some unknown physics that enables sending information back in time, then a communication channel could be set up allowing the flow of future tech into the past. And worst case, we are left with a bunch of beautiful stone tablets for future generations to ponder over.
You mean the knowledge that said billionaire deems important, and/or makes them look good.
Spoiler Alert...
Humans discover an alien planet/race and eventually realize they've destroyed and rebuilt civilization many times. They've learned to build 'museums' for future civilizations to discover that house a roadmap to all of their advanced technology, but biological constraints (they have to reproduce or they die, ensuring extreme population pressure) mean that global war is basically inevitable. So they're stuck speed-running this cycle where they start from the stone age, rapidly rebuild an extremely advanced society based on guidance from the 'museums', experience extreme population growth, bomb themselves back into the stone age, rinse and repeat. There's a hope that if they can just push technology a little bit further each cycle, they might be able to reach a point where they can resolve the underlying issue, but it's unclear if that's a pipe dream.
Interesting take on the "pre-tech society discovers keys to future tech" trope. Does advanced technology actually solve all problems, or just it just let us skip ahead along the timeline to the same conclusion?
So kind of similar to "booty"?
How to build a nuclear warning for 10,000 years’ time
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200731-how-to-build-a-n...
In 10,000 years most the the really dangerous nuclear waste would have decayed. In addition, nuclear waste is a local problem. It won’t magically spread to a large area.
Cadmium, lead, arsenic would probably all be more dangerous than 10,000 year old nuclear waste.
You don't need to, because long before that it will have become economical to reprocess the "waste" (much of which is not "waste" at all, it contains usable fuel), and what is left over after that is only dangerous for a much shorter time.
Assuming civilization collapses or regress to pre-industrial levels where the concept of radiation is lost, any future group trying to extract this mythical energy source would have to first discover the location of something buried so deep underground, and then have to develop the logistics to try and access it with manpower. If the repository is placed in the middle of a desert, the challenge of providing water to the workers would be substantial. If they placed it in Antarctica, simply getting there and keeping the workers from freezing to death would be so monumentally expensive that it would bankrupt any civilization attempting to do so. Even if industrialized capacity does return, it would still be economically monumental to try and get to the waste repository. There is also a decent chance that a future civilization with said capacity would rediscover the concept and dangers of radiation.
When I talk about expense, I also like to highlight this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Menkaure Here is a project to dismantle a pyramid that was canceled because of how expensive it was and because of how little of a return on investment the endeavor appeared to be.
Seems to be highly irresponsible to leave poisonous garbage around no matter what.
Given how distributed knowledge now is, it's pretty ridiculous to think that nuclear will be completely forgotten.
[0]: https://youtu.be/aoy_WJ3mE50
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
(thanks, tineye, for 'sort by oldest' and keeping 404ed results)
At least the form factor has held up well.
Who knows, some bots or digital calendars might stand the test of time.
the reason why you should listen to him read his own book, is because he is a one of a kind academic that _lives_ his craft. its infectious as it is informative.
it gives a background about how Sumerian and Akkadian was decoded.
- Some civilizations wrote on clay but built with wood/straw. We know a lot about their writing but almost nothing about their structures.
- Some civilizations wrote on papyrus but built with stone. We know a lot about their structures but not a lot about their writing (unless it was written on a building). The ancient Egyptians are the classic example here.
1 |
2 ||
3 |||
1+2=3
1+1=2
And building up the language further from there. Draw triangles and label the sides for Pythagoras theorem, repeat a couple times to generalize the concept for the word theorem, etc.
Nobody did that in ancient times as far as I know, so you're right, but couldn't we make this work without needing context of our culture to survive?
I would be interested to read the book you're talking about, if you have the title!
(Your math example reminds me a bit of Lambda Calculus, but I guess you'd have a hard time making a real language out of it.)
We are all going to die eventually, our civilization will fade into nothing and all our thoughts and knowledge will be forgotten forever. So what? It's kinda relieving to be honest.
I don't want to presume anything unnecessarily based on a simple comment, but if
> It's kinda relieving [that we'll all die and be forgotten] to be honest.
is your true opinion, you should know that people care that you're doing okay. I don't know what the best website is to list for suicide prevention unfortunately but, truly, if you're feeling down as a general state of being, there is no shame in seeking help to become happier!
I very much enjoy being a human monkey and wanna see how it plays out for me.
But they didn't. There had to be a point when digging into a stone slab became something else, right?
longnow.org