“IN MONTH XI, 15th day, Venus in the west disappeared, 3 days in the sky it stayed away. In month XI, 18th day, Venus in the east became visible.”

What’s remarkable about these observations of Venus is that they were made about 3500 years ago, by Babylonian astrologers. We know about them because a clay tablet bearing a record of these ancient observations, called the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, was made 1000 years later and has survived largely intact. Today, it can be viewed at the British Museum in London.

We, of course, have knowledge undreamt of by the Babylonians. We don’t just peek at Venus from afar, we have sent spacecraft there. Our astronomers now observe planets round alien suns and peer across vast chasms of space and time, back to the beginning of the universe itself. Our industrialists are transforming sand and oil into ever smaller and more intricate machines, a form of alchemy more wondrous than anything any alchemist ever dreamed of. Our biologists are tinkering with the very recipes for life itself, gaining powers once attributed to gods.

Yet even as we are acquiring ever more extraordinary knowledge, we are storing it in ever more fragile and ephemeral forms. If our civilisation runs into trouble, like all others before it, how much would survive?

Full, scary, Story

The great dinosaurs didn’t, but the very tiny and fragile creatures and life forms living at the same time did. 

Knowing that ‘big’ and seemingly more structurally sound didn’t continue then leads me to believe that very likely it will be the tiniest and most seemingly fragile of ours now will be the ones that WILL survive and perhaps even escape into space drift continuing intact; in particular, our most microscopic technologies.

hulitoons - 09 February 2010 08:32 AM

The great dinosaurs didn’t, but the very tiny and fragile creatures and life forms living at the same time did. 

Knowing that ‘big’ and seemingly more structurally sound didn’t continue then leads me to believe that very likely it will be the tiniest and most seemingly fragile of ours now will be the ones that WILL survive and perhaps even escape into space drift continuing intact; in particular, our most microscopic technologies.

I suspect that sometime way in the future or after some sort of apocalyptic event, such as seen in several recent movies,  there is the possibility that our present methods for storing data will render the data unusable.  The people? beings? that find it might not even recognize it as a data storage medium or may not have the resources to be able to retrieve the data.  This is a good reason why books should be treasured and kept around.

I like the idea of the Rosetta Disks that they discussed at the end of the article. As long as they keep the data stored there in words and such. Changing it to a barcode ‘language’ or somesuch would merely make the disks unreadable. (Whereas keeping it to words means that someone would only have to develop/find a microscope or other magnification device.)

Yes, the article seems to worry about ‘what would happen if TODAY there was an event…’

If an event happened today there would probably be an immediate problem, but knowledge of various civilizations would still be intact with those who survive.

If an event happened today and there were no survivors, then the question is moot.

If an event happened today and there were a few survivors who have offspring that repopulate in the future, then some scraps of what was would continue along as mythical tales.

IF an event happened today and thousands to millions of years later some sentient beings from other portions of the universe discovered our dead planet, there is then, since they had the ability to get here in the first place, a possibility that broadcasts we’ve inadvertently sent out via television and radio signals all those millions of years ago would be received as echos bouncing around that might be readable or viewable or listened to.  Of course it’s also possible that by then the echoes may also be degraded, but also possible they are not.

One of the ways to try to preserve civilization would be to send information out into space and made available in all formats from actual books, to film, disks, records in both spoken and written word, in bionary code, sound etc.  There is always a chance that one or two out of many would survive and eventually orbit back to homebase on timed schedules, or be sent in a straight line off to be found by others.

No matter what human beings do though, everything is temporary.  If all was lost to the children of our great-grand children, I have great faith that they, as intelligent human beings, will, without our assistance or even any knowledge of their own history, recreate a thriving civilization who will in turn, repeat and repeat the same paths and even mistakes we travel today.

hulitoons - 09 February 2010 11:44 AM

One of the ways to try to preserve civilization would be to send information out into space and made available in all formats from actual books, to film, disks, records in both spoken and written word, in bionary code, sound etc.

Perhaps a giant obelisk on the moon!

Accipiter - 09 February 2010 12:13 PM

Perhaps a giant obelisk on the moon!

Can’t do that. Gummint cut the funding to go to the moon.

I think, as some scientists do, that a solution could be found in holographic storage. Not the kind using bits, but one more akin to those holographic pictures on some identity cards. For creating it, we still need to find a long-lasting material, but viewing the images only requires a single beam of light, and not even always one created by a laser or set of optical lenses.
The idea is to create a format that can exist without needing any external devices to read it, packaged in a sturdy container of some kind, with etched symbols showing its function and maybe even the lens needed if using a high density of pages. A hologram is by it’s properties rather redundant, a corner being chipped of does not destroy data, just reduces the resolution. And with a nice design, can be kept safe by people thinking it a mere jewel, or a magical artifact, only to be later, hopefully, discovered to contain several pages of text and images with ancient knowledge.

Maybe we’ll even find such holocubes from the Atlantians