The 2012 Millennium Artifact | Hacker News Reader

The 2012 Millennium Artifact

cs.rochester.edu

36 points1970-01-0122 comments

So, uh, is this irony? They design an electronic artifact that is supposed to last 1,000 years. Cool. But to check on its status, i.e. learn what it looks like, you have to go to ... Facebook?!

As far as learning what it looks like, there are photos on the site too (under "The Artifact").

The incorporation of Facebook is a bit silly but it's a student project, I guess the point was really for the students to consider the sort of unusual constraints and considerations that are required for such a long-term design. Seems unlikely anyone involved really expected to be updating that Facebook page for the next thousand years.

> the point was really for the students to consider the sort of unusual constraints and considerations that are required for such a long-term design

Right ... and after considering those important aspects, they decided to send everyone to FB to check on the artefact's status?

Talk about scoring an own goal.

Seems like Facebook has outlived the project :(

Last FB update was 2013...

I suspect a bad end for this item: "Possible explosive device found and neutralized at local school"

I think I recall getting a passive mention of it on a desk around 2014. More likely the last student who worked on it and who cared to update the page graduated.

Recently, I did a similar thought experiment: what's the best platform agnostic way to store data (photos, videos, text, etc) to ensure availability for 100 years?

You really start to realize the permanence is mostly an illusion, we expect the internet or AWS to be there, but there are no guarantees.

crystal storage, holographic data. also dna.

Encode the data on a gold-plated disc, attach the disc to a space probe, and launch the probe toward the constellation Telescopium.

I can't find it now, but I remember reading about this guy who will etch your data onto a ceramic disc and store it in a old mine in, like, Switzerland or somewhere like that. It's not a lot of data per disc, but it's effectively permanent.

…assuming you can find another guy in 1000 years who will be able to retrieve your disc from the mine :)

My family has a handwritten journal from a family member that wrote it in the 1880s. It is still in good condition.

I also have 100-150 year old books on koine greek (modern versions are trash). They're in great condition.

I'd say print. Paper, hardbound copy books stored in a proper place so they last. Next up is stone.

> stored in a proper place

That'll probably get you a lot longer than 100 years. We still have my great-grandfather's emigration paper from somewhere around 1905, as well as other random papers from the 1920s-1930s, just stored in a shoebox.

Dark, dry, and away from insects is really all one can do.

My mother has a bible from 1607 in a shoebox. Maybe the shoe box is kept in a plastic bag. The previous owner, her uncle, kept it on a bookshelf.

They sure don't make them like they used to.

Yes, they don't make them like they used to. Including that shoe box, which is not made from acid free paper and is causing that bible to degrade as we speak. I'd urge your mother to move the bible to an acid-free archival box. They're not that expensive.

You could at least like, get a nice fire safe box for it lol.

The kind of paper is important. I've handled incunabula, printed books from before 1500. Maybe the paper is dirty from hundreds of years of handling, but the paper itself tends to be sturdy and supple. This continues up until the mid 1800s when new methods of paper making resulted in the presence of aluminum sulphate, which makes the paper turn brittle and yellow over time. It was sobering to see a volume of Description de l’Égypte (1809-1828) side by side with a volume of Monuments de l’Égypte et de la Nubie (1835–45). They're comparable works, elephant folios of plates illustrating Egyptian monuments. The former uses the older paper, the latter the newer paper. The newer volumes looked much older and the paper was brittle.

If you're printing something today that you want to last for hundreds of years, make sure you're using acid-free paper and archival-grade ink.

Allegedly M-Disc optical media are good for ~1 thousand years if stored properly. This assumes you can find an appropriate optical media reader (M-Disc use a mineral layer instead of dye so you need a far stronger laser to burn the disc, but should be able to read it with a standard reader), and have support for the file systems and media formats stored on the media.

I wouldn't think ISO 9660 or JPEG would become lost knowledge in that timeframe, and presumably the tech level in the future will be high enough that reconstructing a dvd or blu-ray drive from a general understanding of the principles involved would not be insurmountable.

In the end the part that failed was anyone caring enough to update what happened

> Price--The materials and components making up the artifact need to cost less than $1000 in total. (This does not include the value of student labor.)

Oh yes it does, arf.

Don't forget to avoid electrolytic capacitors...

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