Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Billion year data storage

One of my biggest worries about any potential apocalypse is that huge amounts of human knowledge will be destroyed or lost within a few decades, from simple stuff like how to make concrete to more advanced topics like psychology and astrophysics. I've considered things like paying for data to be etched into metal, like the Rosetta Project, but the amount of data you can store is really limited. But when I see something like this method for storing data indefinitely in carbon nanotubes, I get all excited.

I think that several caches of the contents of the Library of Congress (and other similarly encompassing storehouses of knowledge) should be scattered across the world. Embed these knowledge chips in national monuments and important locations likely to survive apocalyptic disasters - Mt. Rushmore, Stonehenge, the Washington Monument, and so on. Ideally, the more chips there are the better. If there's one in every home, we'd be able to retrieve one eventually. I'd also put a cache on the moon with a huge arrow pointing at it, visible from the earth.

Via Wired.

1 comment:

Jasmine said...

this is a great point I would aslo like to think the arts should be preserved if enoupgh survive but personaly I just think theres to much! we are such a complex civilization we could not be duplicated even by ourselves!look atwhere we've come from! anyways besides if our time is up .. it's up!

my beliefs are christian
so I know "we" have a timeline..starts and ends! I think ideas of how to survive the end in body or history are impracticle and frankly futile
but thats just me

but even if you don't agree with my beliefs science can point to a definate end of hospitable conditions for humans on earth

but lets just say you dont believe in God and won't acknowlege science evidence of the end of humans and are deft to survive or even just preserve our undestanding and the evedence of our society for what..?