DailyDirt: In The Year 2525...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Aug 20th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Computers have made it easier and easier for people to create incredible amounts of data -- passing the zettabyte barrier in 2010. The growth of data is actually surpassing our ability to store it, and it's a bit concerning that our ability to store digital information for long periods of time isn't too reliable (just try to access stuff on a 5.25" floppy). Here are just a few interesting links on preserving information for thousands of years.

Digitally-stored information about nuclear waste needs to be accessible many thousands of years from now. Engraving the info on sapphire discs with platinum is just one proposed solution that could work for future archaeologists -- but in what language should it be written? [url]
If you thought your burned CDs/DVDs lasted forever, think again. But if you still want to store your data on plastic discs, there's a company (Millenniata) that sells an optical disc engraving technology for writing CDs/DVDs that work with standard CD/DVD readers -- and that claims to last for about 1,000 years (or at least hundreds of years). [url]
Neanderthals were making cave paintings over 40,800 years ago in Spain. How much of our art will survive the next 40,000 years? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: archaeologists, archive, data, neanderthal, storage
Companies: millenniata

36 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2012 @ 5:09pm

...I'll be still alive, still alive.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wally (profile), 20 Aug 2012 @ 5:34pm

So much to say in do little time....where should I begin. I took an arts/humanities course in college. As far as our art is concerned, there will always be a way for humans to express themselves. As it has for tens of thousands of years, it will become a mystery to those 40,000 years from now. Cool thing is, they get to interperate our works and music. Those are some lucky humans 40,000 years from us :-)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael Ho (profile), 20 Aug 2012 @ 5:36pm

Re:
good job, anonymous coward... you got the reference! :P
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2012 @ 5:38pm

art in 40,000 yrs...
will be still under copyright protection... and earning royalties from alien races.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
gnudist, 20 Aug 2012 @ 6:13pm

Re: art in 40,000 yrs...
Then the alien races declare independance from alien king george and the new country does not recognise foreign copyrights
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2012 @ 6:13pm

Re:
And there will be a trio of hot chicks who fight for survival in that post-apocalyptic world against robotic enemies and a descendant of The Joker and Harley Quinn.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Digitari, 20 Aug 2012 @ 6:18pm

Re: Re: art in 40,000 yrs...
Yup yup, there goes some injuns, now
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2012 @ 6:20pm

A lifespan of only 3 to 5 years? Bull. I have discs I burned 9 years ago and they read just fine. And, horror of horrors, some of them were made by CMC!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rich, 20 Aug 2012 @ 6:58pm

I sick of hearing crap like this. I actually have 5 1/4 floppies (a lot of them). They are probably older than you are, and they are still accessible. Media is more resilient than you kids think is it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2012 @ 7:04pm

Re:
You forgot "get off my lawn"

Also, just the changing formats over the years will make accessing data from multiple sources a nightmare even if the media itself survives for thousands of years.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wally (profile), 20 Aug 2012 @ 7:07pm

Re:
The only two reasons I had used a 5.25" were for education. Would it please you to know, Rich, I'm 26 years old and that 5.25" floppies were a part of my education?

In kindergarten, my school had an Apple III where we learned how to program lines in to make art.

In my Junior and Senior years in high school, I had my father for both Chemistry courses offfered. We used an Apple IIe to simulate the molecular breakdown of objects in acid.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wally (profile), 20 Aug 2012 @ 7:23pm

Re: Re:
That and cruddy DRM. I love legacy software. I honestly think it more satisfying than just clicking all the time :-)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
SujaOfJauhnral (profile), 20 Aug 2012 @ 8:15pm

How much of our art will survive the next 40,000 years?

Practically none if copyright has it's way.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2012 @ 8:47pm

Re: Re:
And end with one final (but as yet, unresolved) battle...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2012 @ 8:50pm

Re:
It just doesn't matter
It just doesn't matter
It just doesn't matter
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RyanNerd (profile), 20 Aug 2012 @ 9:20pm

Re:
I have an 8" disk taped to my wall. 4K of data on that baby. Only cost me $20. Anyone know where I can find a VAX so I can read what is on the disk?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RyanNerd (profile), 20 Aug 2012 @ 9:23pm

The Last Question
Here's what Asimov had to say: http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm
[ link to this | view in thread ]
JoeCool (profile), 20 Aug 2012 @ 11:29pm

Re:
I sick of hearing crap like this. I actually have 5 1/4 floppies (a lot of them). They are probably older than you are, and they are still accessible. Media is more resilient than you kids think is it.

I've been using floppies since they were 8"... and none of them read anymore. I've boxes of 5.25" mini-floppies (the proper term for them)... and almost none of them are readable. I've boxes upon boxes of 3.5" micro-floppies (again the proper term)... and very few of them are readable. I'm no kid, and yes indeed, the old floppies are NOT very resilient.

Most of my CDRs that are more than 5 years old are only partially readable, and only a few of the 10 year-old CDRs can be read at all. In fact, the most resilient storage medium I have found is... my audio cassettes. Most of them still play fine after 35 years. My VHS tapes are probably about as good.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2012 @ 11:44pm

Re:
DMCA all the cave paintings!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2012 @ 1:26am

Re: Re:
possibly some of your floppies are unreadable, but it the format of that information unreadable ??

of course not... do you have available to you readers for that format ?? again, that would be yes..

does it look like there will be any time soon when you will not be able to purchase readers of that format ? NO...

is it impossible to take all your readable floppies, and burn them onto a DVD or a CD or onto a USB memory ? ie to convert it onto a more modern media, without loss of data ?? YES..

does the capacity of modern media increase with time, are you now able to put the contents of many 3.5" floppes onto a single CD, and copy that CD every 5 years ?

you could probably read the contents of your old floppies and re-write the data onto the same disk and reset the gradual magnet degridation !!

the language you would use is iconography and mathematics.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2012 @ 1:31am

Engraving the info on sapphire discs with platinum is just one proposed solution that could work for future archaeologists

or just put a skull on a stick, seems to work for most people..
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2012 @ 1:38am

all so worried about information, what information from 2000 years ago, is important to people of today, and what would make you think that the information you have now would be of any use to someone living 2000 from now ?

do you think they will be able to use that information to advance their lives ?? really..

nuclear waste, do you not think they would have the technology to determine potential risk of radioactivity in 2000 years, possibly even more advanced than we have in 2012 ?

in the year 2525, you'll be able to store the entire knowledge base, all art, all music, all movies, maps and the earths phone book of era 2012 in the scretch pad memory in your watch.. with several million terabytes to spare..
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Seegras (profile), 21 Aug 2012 @ 1:45am

Lost Ancient Art
Well, yes, some cave paintings from 40'000 years ago still exist. But that's probably only a tiny bit of all the culture at that time.

How many roman murals (only 2000 years old) still exist? They could have survived, as pompeii shows, and as pompeii also shows, the roman cities were full of them. And not only murals, but statues as well. An awful lot, surely more than 99%, were lost and destroyed in the meantime.

So just because the material (and the information) could theoretically survive several thousand years doesn't mean it will.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Zakida Paul (profile), 21 Aug 2012 @ 2:28am

2025 headline
Remember When We Had Freedom On The Internet?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dennis deems, 21 Aug 2012 @ 6:59am

Re:
what information from 2000 years ago, is important to people of today...?

The works of Plato
The works of Aristotle
The dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
&c
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mason Wheeler, 21 Aug 2012 @ 7:34am

Storing information
Digitally-stored information about nuclear waste needs to be accessible many thousands of years from now... but in what language should it be written?

Why should it be stored digitally? We have known, proven methods of preserving information in large quantities over thousands of years. Just look at the Dead Sea Scrolls. Written in Hebrew thousands of years ago, then dug up and read by people who speak Hebrew.

Why shouldn't we be able to do something similar with English, and no high technology required?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rich, 21 Aug 2012 @ 8:45am

Re: Re:
I think you and the anonymous coward completely miss my point. It wasn't an old man rant. Point is the author is making the same tired argument about older media being unreadable that I hear over and over. I seriously doubt he has tested his hypothesis, because he is young enough that he's probably never even used a 5 1/4 floppy. I *have* tested it. I have some that are almost 40 yrs. old, and most (about 90%) still work. I've got 10 yr. old CD-Rs that still work.

Regardless, I think this argument is completely moot. It is not like people are relying on these pieces of old media. Everything I had on floppy (and CD-R, etc.) is currently on hard drives. You will find there are many modern archives for ALL old forms of electric media. Is is not static. The data will continue to move as we do. It is silly to worry about old media "dying out." If you think I am wrong, just check out the emulator scene.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rich, 21 Aug 2012 @ 8:54am

Re: Re:
Maybe your just a bad archivist. Most of my 5 1/4s (there was no "proper" term consistently used) read fine, as do my 10 yr. old CD-Rs.

Regardless, you complete miss the point. It doesn't matter than eventually they will become unreadable. No one is relying on them to be! The data moves as we do. All that data from old floppies, etc. is now on hard drive. When we move beyond hard drives, the young people of that day will be whining that soon all hard drives will be unreadable! Well, so what? The data from it, isn't. It's a stupid argument.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PT (profile), 21 Aug 2012 @ 9:32am

Re:
"Engraving the info on sapphire discs with platinum is just one proposed solution.."

More likely, when someone digs them up in the future they'll be used to found a new religion.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael Ho (profile), 21 Aug 2012 @ 11:59am

Re: Re: Re:
Rich,

I'm definitely old enough to have used 5.25" floppies... and perhaps the ones I still have in a closet are readable, but I don't have the appropriate hardware to access the data anymore (though I'm sure someone out there still has a functional Atari 800XL with an external floppy drive).

Regardless, if you think floppy disks are reliable media, more power to you. I agree that really important data will be transferred to new media formats, but wouldn't it be nice to have a media that was designed to last? Printing on acid-free paper seems more reliable than burning a CD/DVD, and there *should* be a solution so that digital info can be stored as long as printed books (without having to transfer media every few decades).

I'm not sure what your argument really is: do you think that people *shouldn't* be trying to come up with better kinds of long term digital storage? Personally, I think it's a pain to transfer data from one format to another, so if someone comes up with a cost effective way to "store it and forget it" -- I'd like to know about it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wally (profile), 21 Aug 2012 @ 12:13pm

Re: Re: Re:
Thing is, my high school went through great lengths to keep the 5.25" floppies maintained. They still workded before my father's retirement. I think the problem is that the degrehation of software is the result of not using the disk and not keeping a dust cover. Some of the best maintenance is preventative.

5.25" floppies are still readable in modern machines with DosBox and this:

http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2012 @ 12:19pm

I don't think our species will survive until that year.. Unless we change to a resource based economy.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wally (profile), 21 Aug 2012 @ 12:23pm

Re: Re: Re:
About the emulator scene...you have to have a hardware source or a hard copy to dump from for it to work. So it's still very important to maintain your old floppies and cartridges.

I have a USB Micro (3.5") floppy disk drive and through using DosBox on my Windows Vista Machine I can play Wheel of Fortune.

I can also emulate 68k Macintosh software. But you need a physical storage device in order to get a proper dump of the software.

So in preservation we still need the physical objects the data is stored on.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rekrul, 21 Aug 2012 @ 1:14pm

If you thought your burned CDs/DVDs lasted forever, think again.
$4 each for blank DVDs? And what are you supposed to do with them? They tell you that normal drives don't have enough power to burn them, but I don't see them offering a drive on that site. So you're buying media that you can't use. Great idea!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2012 @ 1:55pm

Re: If you thought your burned CDs/DVDs lasted forever, think again.
LG makes a ton of different drives that can write these. They say "M-Disc" on the front of the tray usually.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wally (profile), 21 Aug 2012 @ 2:10pm

Re:
Nice Star Trek Reference :-)
[ link to this | view in thread ]