this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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From what I understand, a lot of knowledge was lost following the collapse of the Roman Empire as manuscripts were no longer being copied at the established frequency and information that had lost relevance (for certain jobs etc.) wasn't being passed down.

If a catastrophic event were to happen nowadays, how much information would we theoretically lose? Is the knowledge of the world, stored digitally or on printed books, safer than it was before?

All the information online for example - does that have a greater chance of surviving millennia than say a preserved manuscript?

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (9 children)

No,
The best non-archival grade digital storage media will last decades at best, including optical Media like CD/DVD formats.
We're in what's considered a "digital dark age" where most of our digital backups will not survive in their current form and endless copying will eventually corrupt the data. There are archival grade systems that can theoretically store data for hundreds of years, but obviously we haven't had a chance to test that yet.
But I think the biggest issue is compatibility.
If I were to hand you a 5¼ floppy disc with data on it, what's the likelihood you have the equipment on hand to read that data right now? It's pretty slim but it's possible. But they're not making 5¼ drives anymore and we're left with what's on hand.
200 years in the future, if someone finds an archival grade DVD long after the standard has been replaced, it's highly unlikely they'll have the equipment or software to read it.
The second issue is electricity.
If something like a Carrington event level solar flare happens and knocks us back to the Stone age for a generation or so, we'll be able to read our remaining knowledge from ink and paper just fine, but we won't have a prayer of accessing the digital information.
You need to remember that digital storage is less than a century old, we're just scratching the surface of this tech now and we haven't even come close to revealing all of its secrets, things are going to continue changing rapidly for the foreseeable future and a consequence of that is leaving old tech behind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I guess something like this (data stored on glass plates 'Project Silica') would store the data safely for a much longer period. What I'm not entirely clear on is whether it would still be possible to read that data in the far future - it seems to rely on some kind of machine learning to decode it.

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