Comment by Asraelite 11 days ago
> They are really unmatched when it comes to longevity and safeguarding information in a way that computers cannot replicate.
How so? There are long-term digital storage technologies that would long outlast any book and are many orders of magnitude denser.
> If it's digital storage, you have to have electricity, a compatible device, an understanding of the storage, and software that can read it.
And, increasingly, DRM servers that will allow you to read it.
Information has outlived entire civilizations because of books. The key is the technology needed to decode and read it, which is just humans themselves. Either people still exist who can read and speak the language or closely related languages, and if not, we can hope to find something like a Rosetta stone or use statistical analysis that relies up on the commonality of all human languages.
Any digital storage device is simply giving you a bit stream. Being able to read the bits at all might rely upon technology that no longer exists. You need to know the layout of the medium, where to start reading, how to perform any built-in error correcting, what constitutes data versus metadata. Once you read the bits, you still need to do all of that again, but this time at the level of the filesystem. Then you need to do it a third time at the level of the file format. Then you get, at best, something like a consecutive sequence of unicode code points. Now you still need to know unicode.
We have no idea if these sorts of technologies will be remembered in 3,000 years, but given the history, there's a very good chance people will still be able to read Sanskrit and Latin, and the way the human eyeball accepts and decodes light waves will not change.
The Lindy Effect[0] agree with you.
You think assuming humans in the future won't have eyeballs capable of viewing visible light is a bad assumption?
If the humans of the future are all blind, I think we can forget about worrying about preserving civilization.
While I think common digital media outlasting analog forms in terms of integrity over long periods of time is unrealistic I do have 40 year old CDs from 1984 that are still bit perfect as of just a couple years ago (verified against online checksum databases for the same releases), so it'll be interesting seeing how long they last.
There was a period of time where pressed CDs were manufactured poorly, with the aluminum layer inside exposed to the outside, resulting in corrosion over time and loss of readability on those CDs.
Overall, though, properly-made CDs, handled carefully, have been excellent at storing data long-term.
But while this is nice enough I guess for storing individual musical albums long-term, it's not practical for storing truly large volumes of arbitrary data. CD-Rs and CD-RWs have not had the same durability demonstrated at all (quite the opposite in fact). DVDs are better at almost 4GB per disc, but here again only the factory ones are actually durable, and 4GB isn't going to store much these days, perhaps one movie with high lossy compression.
> There are those CDs made out of rock, but they have never veen proven to pass the test of time.
You're saying that something that has existed for less than 50 years doesn't count because we haven't been able to actually test it for more than 50 years, even though we understand the physics behind it and can theoretically predict how long it will last...
The best one seems to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage but there's also M-DISC and DNA storage. Microfilm also lasts about 500 years.
As for ubiquitous access, store a reading device or instructions on how to build one along with the data. If you're unable to do that, then I doubt you would be able to keep a massive library of books around for very long either.
There's also no financial incentive to build technologies like this. If the world actually got together and tried to build long-term digital storage then I'm sure we could come up with something even better.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage
An interesting technology, but also not exactly something I could get at my local Best Buy today.
M-DISC, assuming it's writable using consumer Blu-Ray writers, is promising though – Blu-Ray drives can probably still considered ubiquitous enough in a pinch.
> DNA storage
DNA is in fact extremely unstable unless it's part of living organisms that constantly error-correct and replicate it, and even then you have random mutations.
AFAIK a library doesn't really require maintenance, unless there are extreme weather conditions, the books will survive for a long time on their own. It's only the ancient books that require a controlled environment, because they already lasted for centuries and we're trying to have them last for even more due to their historical value. So you would be able to keep libraries around for long in many (most?) scenarios. Instead, the devices you need to read those storage media require high-tech factories to be manufactured. Just having the instructions to build one will not suffice.
How long? I don't think a library would last more than 100,000 years given natural disasters and plate tectonics etc. All you need to do is make a reading device that can last for a similar amount of time. And if the device itself wouldn't last that long then you could provide as much long-lasting equipment or material as possible to help build it.
The scenario you're describing is incredibly specific. It requires a post-apocalyptic world where humans have survived, but have somehow completely lost all ability to access past knowledge. Civilization must be advanced enough to access and read a library that has been shielded from the elements for millennia, but not advanced enough to build microscopes or lasers, even when given precise instructions on how to do so. It must be far enough into the future that any possible small high-tech reading device we could create is unlikely to have survived, but not so far into the future that a very large library structure is likely to have collapsed.
> I don't think a library would last more than 100,000 years given natural disasters and plate tectonics etc.
100000 years is a very long time. And in that time, you have good chances of reeboting civilization and reconstructing our current industrial world.
> All you need to do is make a reading device that can last for a similar amount of time
Easier said than done, and why would you need to do it, if libraries already solve the problem?
BTW I think we're considering two different scenarios. Libraries are excellent at solving the scenario given here, i.e. the internet collapses tomorrow.
The only requirements for reading a physical book is that you know how to read and can turn pages.
If it's digital storage, you have to have electricity, a compatible device, an understanding of the storage, and software that can read it.