Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The fact that data lasts a long time doesn't necessarily mean that anyone will be able to read it, of course. A classic example is the BBC's "Domesday Project" in 1986. A huge nationwide project to record the lives of everyday people, intended to be a "time capsule" for the future, and written as a laserdisk, which was seen at the time to be the technology of the future. In 2011 they had to issue an appeal for help to save it, because there were no computers around, a mere 25 years later, that could read the information.
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I'd be willing to bet that if a technologically advanced society still exists when the time capsule is eventually opened (i.e. one which
would have laserdisk players if they had happened to be the popular choice), then they would be able to recreate any needed tech if they felt it was important enough.
IOW a society reduced to rocks and sticks would not be able to read these 5d femotglass thingies even if they HAD been the dominant format up untl the fall, but a society that merely left the technology behind and moved on could reinvent it if needed.
I'm in the middle of reading (er...listening to) Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" and I'm wondering where are the nanotube memories they were demoing back in 2004? Durable enough to replace flash, fast enough to replace DRAM and orders of magnitude more dense.....
ApK