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Rosetta Disk Designed For 2,000 Years Archive
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Aug 25, 2008 06:36 AM
from the that'll-do-for-now dept.
from the that'll-do-for-now dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Kevin Kelly has an interesting post about an archive designed with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years to serve future generations as a modern Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta disk contains analog 'human-readable' scans of scripts, text, and diagrams using nickel deposited on an etched silicon disk and includes 15,000 microetched pages of language documentation in 1,500 different languages, including versions of Genesis 1-3, a universal list of the words common for each language, and pronunciation guides. Produced by the Long Now Foundation, the plan is to replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world in nondescript locations so at least one will survive their 2,000-year lifespan. 'This is one of the most fascinating objects on earth,' says Oliver Wilke. 'If we found one of these things 2,000 years ago, with all the languages of the time, it would be among our most priceless artifacts. I feel a high responsibility for preserving it for future generations.'"
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Technology: We're In Danger of Losing Our Memories 398 comments
Hugh Pickens writes "The chief executive of the British Library, Lynne Brindley, says that our cultural heritage is at risk as the Internet evolves and technologies become obsolete, and that historians and citizens face a 'black hole' in the knowledge base of the 21st century unless urgent action is taken to preserve websites and other digital records. For example, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as US president last week, all traces of George W. Bush disappeared from the White House website. There were more than 150 websites relating to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney that vanished instantly at the end of the games and are now stored only by the National Library of Australia. 'If websites continue to disappear in the same way as those on President Bush and the Sydney Olympics... the memory of the nation disappears too,' says Brindley. The library plans to create a comprehensive archive of material from the 8M .uk domain websites, and also is organizing a collecting and archiving project for the London 2012 Olympics. 'The task of capturing our online intellectual heritage and preserving it for the long term falls, quite rightly, to the same libraries and archives that have over centuries systematically collected books, periodicals, newspapers, and recordings...'" Over the years we've discussed various aspects of this archiving problem.
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Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure they picked bible passages because the translations were mostly done for them already but I'm a little embarassed that future generations are going to think how amazingly superstitious we were. I mean, Genesis 2 alone...
Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
They're going to think we were cuckoo!
Should have used Harry Potter... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's contemporary, and already translated into almost every language on Earth.
OTOH The Bible is about the only book that wouldn't have earned them a DMCA slapdown affidavit.
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Re:Should have used Harry Potter... (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH The Bible is about the only book that wouldn't have earned them a DMCA slapdown affidavit.
I know you said that partly in jest, but I actually got a little depressed when I gave it some thought. Think of what we could have included: the music that influenced generations, films that invoke anger, sadness, joy, books that literally changed the way that the world thought -- and not one bit of it can be reproduced, all because some assholes wanted to collect a check from an animated mouse.
We fucked up somewhere.
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Re:Should have used Harry Potter... (Score:5, Interesting)
nonsense. You do realise it is up to the copyright holder what permissions they grant right?
Not all copyright holders are cackling billionaire bastards.
As an experiment pick a dozen living writers, email them and ask them if any of them object to granting permission for their books to be published on this project. I'd be amazed if every single one of them didn't say "hell yes".
Don't tarnish the 99% of sane copyright holders with the stupidity of the noisy 1%.
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Re:Should have used Harry Potter... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry. I get confused in the morning sometimes, I guess I found my way into his kitchen by mistake.
I'll try to avoid further kitchen-defecation.
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Funny)
With the way things are going very soon the Bible will be the only book that's out of copyright....
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Some versions are copyrighted (Score:5, Interesting)
With the way things are going very soon the Bible will be the only book that's out of copyright....
Some versions of the Bible are copyrighted. Any translation undertaken in the last eighty years or so.
Oh, and in Britain the Authorized King James version is subject to Crown copyright, which is perpetual. It's never going to enter the public domain. Probably not even if the monarchy were to be abolished -- any British government which saw fit to abolish the monarchy would likely retain its privileges for the state. Not that it seems like the monarchy's going away any time soon.
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Pfff (Score:4, Insightful)
It has been two thousand years since some girl claimed that she got knocked up by a burning bush rather then her boyfriend and millions of people worship her as a virgin.
One person's cuckoo is another persons prophet. When everyone has forgotten Ron Hubbard was a bad Sci-Fi writer his novels may one day serve as the basis of a religion.
Nah, that could never happen.
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Re:Pfff (Score:5, Insightful)
Hundreds of millions of people base their lives around those stories.
Sort of.
When you point out the fine print to them, most of those people don't measure up so they're going to hell anyway. Might as well have partied.
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Re:Pfff (Score:5, Informative)
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Careful, there. (Score:5, Informative)
1.) Make sure you stay humble as you critique "Pharisees", or you'll be acting holier-than-thou. I think those tendencies are present in everyone. I hate that, and pray that God will be changing my heart [gnpcb.org]. But it's important not to forget that it's there.
2.) When you say that "Christianity is about self-sacrifice, living as Christ lived, and loving as Christ loved," make sure you maintain the difference between (1) walking in the Spirit, being transformed to be more like Christ, and (2) the good news. If you walk up to someone and tell them, "Look at Jesus! Live like he lived!", then you haven't given them good news. Because, as you said, we can't measure up to that standard.
The life of a Christian is about what you said. But the gospel is forgiveness, salvation, adoption, and the receipt of the Holy Spirit--by faith, not by working to be like Christ.
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Original sin is nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
You are an troll and a serious coward but this was too much fun to pass up.
The point that you're missing entirely is that there is NO SUCH THING as a good person.
Which is a premise that I fundamentally disagree with and why I'm not a christian. If you want to convince someone of your logic you might want to start with a premise both parties agree to. Furthermore you'll have to come up with a definition of "good" so that we can be sure we are talking about the same thing.
Even your hypothetical "good atheist's" actions were tainted with self-righteousness.
Helping others == "self-righteousness"? Can be but certainly doesn't have to be. Are you trying to say we shouldn't help others because that would be "self-righteous"?
Better to be a sinner and know it than a pompous ass who thinks that he's perfect.
I'm not aware of anyone who thinks they are perfect though I do know some people who try very, very hard to be. The fact that no one is perfect does not and never will logically equal "no such thing as a good person".
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Re:Pfff (Score:5, Interesting)
That's got to be one of the silliest critiques of Christianity that I've read. Even setting aside Protestant/Catholic/Orthodox questions of the veneration of Mary.
People don't believe in Jesus because of Mary's claim that God made her pregnant. People believe in Jesus because of claims about his miracles & resurrection.
If you're going to give the pseudoskeptic's treatment to the virgin birth, you're doing it all wrong. You should be doubting whether Mary ever claimed such a thing--you should be speculating that early Christians made up the story.
But I realize that wouldn't make as effective an approach to junk rhetoric.
Hmm... I guess you could throw in some half-informed claims about "mistranslation" of Isaiah 7:14, while you're at it.
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Re:Pfff (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't believe in Jesus because of Mary's claim that God made her pregnant. People believe in Jesus because of claims about his miracles & resurrection.
Isn't a virgin birth one of those miracles? By casting doubt on that miracle, you cast doubt on Jesus's divinity.
But yes, the most important question to settle is whether a "Jesus" actually ever existed in the first place. There's not much evidence for that assertion outside the Bible.
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Re:Pfff (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I think they maybe WERE the weekly "tv drama" and that we've imputed a little too much significance to them because the records happened to survive.
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly, though, it's a text that has a reasonable chance of surviving and being updated to remain understandable. Even if religion should start declining rapidly, it's played such a significant role in history and the text has been spread so widely that it's one of very few works I'd be willing to bet will exist in a "modern" translation 2000 years from now - a work that is currently considered a sacred text by more than half of the worlds population (both christians, muslims and jews) has a good shot at longevity.
What other texts do we have that has a similar chance of surviving? There are a lot of texts that are revered to some extent, but few or none that so many people have copies of, and even fewer currently widespread works that the next generation or the one after that will still have many copies of.
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Funny)
What other texts do we have that has a similar chance of surviving? There are a lot of texts that are revered to some extent
the man pages for emacs?
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:4, Funny)
To give an idea of how embarrassing this will be, think of it like this: Bible-thumpers are the old Trekkies.
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Interesting)
Even so, no one goes around saying the Greeks were idiots.
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, it's a shame they had to fill it with it with mythology, instead of something more useful like some sort of documentation of our current scientific knowledge, information about actual significant historical events, or something.
Parent
We're in the minority here (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether we like it—or agree with it—or not, the Bible is something that is very important to a very large number of people on Earth. Genesis, in particular (and much of the rest of the Old Testament) represents a creation myth believed to lesser or greater extent by 3.8 billion of our 6 billion-odd people (Wikipedia's estimate of the number of believers in Abrahamic religions).
Just because we agnostic or atheist geeks think that such things are embarrassing doesn't make it any less representative of the world we live in.
Dan Aris
Parent
Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the bible is already translated, and because the bible is more likely to survive 2000 years.
Assume that none of the 1500 languages used still exist 2,000 years from now. It's a fairly safe bet that if there's still humans, there's still going to be religion. And as annoying as it is to admit for some people, Christianity is likely to be one of those religions that survives. That'll give them a translation key for 1,500 languages, which can in turn be used to translate the rest of the information contained on the plates.
A far more likely situation, though, is that several of the languages used will still be in use. Or at least, still readable. That's why the Rosetta stone was so useful: the other two languages on the stone were still known, allowing scholars to realize that they said the same thing and that it was likely that the third, Heiroglyphs, said the same thing. The larger the sample size you have, the better the chance that it'll be useful. Again, however, having the biblical passages present serves as a translation key for the rest of the information contained on the plates. 1,500 pages out of 15,000 isn't that much.
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Insightful)
If those people choose what economists call "Nash efficiency" as an ideology (what atheists do), improving themselves without conscious regard to others
That's embarrassingly wrong. Do you know any actual atheists?
Let's take the classic ur-atheist, the physical scientist. You're suggesting all of those people are in it for themselves? Because the ones I know could do a lot better than a post-doc's wage. The ones I've asked do it because they want to be involved in an enterprise for the ages. They want to learn and contribute that learning to human understanding. They want to teach, sharing knowledge with young minds. They are atheists, but they are not so much in it for the bucks.
Personally, I'm an atheist and very community-minded. Why? Well really, that's who I am. But if you want me to rationalize it, I'm glad to say that I value life and hope and love, and I want to maximize those things not just for myself, but for everybody, and for the ages. Yes, it's all dust eventually, but so what? Every extra moment of beauty, of joy, of wonder that we make is that much better a universe.
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Informative)
You go on to admit that atheism is in fact in disagreement with you
No. No, I don't.
What I'm "admitting" is that your (erroneous) expectations don't match my actual views. Dreaming your dreams of a Santa Claus in the sky, the impermanence of the physical world scares you.
It does not scare me. That nothing lasts takes none of the fun out of making something good. If anything, it makes it more poignant, more beautiful. If you don't believe me, go experience some of the art of people like Andy Goldsworthy, who make some works intentionally impermanent.
Again we will see less moral incentive determining their actions. The cracks will be wider.
This is a fine argument from theory, with no actual data. You, some random guy, on the Internet, "guarantee" your argument. So?
History shows that you are wrong. Buddhism started out as a godless venture, accepting the eternal flux we live in, and the Zen Buddhists carry that atheism through today. Have they turned evil? Go meet some and let me know what you think, but I'd say they're doing fine.
Science also suggests you are wrong. At least some and probably much of the human moral sense is provably an innate biological function. For readable introductions, see "Good Natured" by Franz de Waal or "Demonic Males" by Richard Wrangham. And in the decade since those books came out, there's been a heap of good experimental and fMRI observational work, reinforcing the biological basis of community-oriented behavior. And let's not forget "The Forest People," showing that non-Christan societies can develop strong community-oriented behavior.
Your theory that the only source of morality is Christian memes is provably false. And the data about crime and atheism proves the opposite of your notion as well. Atheists are circa 10% of America's population, are circa 0.2% of the prison population. Japan, the least Christian country in the G8, has the lowest violent crime rate. America, the most Christian country, has the highest.
You're really just repeating and embroidering the kind of ignorant statements that Christians make about atheists all the time.
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Re:Well that's embarassing (Score:5, Funny)
The problem, as usual, is in the presentation bias.
I got myself a copy of this rosetta thing and well, see for yourself:
Sad.
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Put it into deep space (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be a logical thing to put into deep space - on the Moon or on Mars, say. It is a good environment to preserve things, and any future civilization is going to look up our space probes sooner or later.
Re:Put it into deep space (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, part of the purpose of the Long Now Foundation is to make current scientific knowledge available to our descendants in the event of a global catastrophe. By the time they've (re)developed the technology required to retrieve something from space, there isn't a huge amount more we can teach them.
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Re:Put it into deep space (Score:5, Funny)
That's why you would hide it in an intuitive place. In the middle of the biggest crater on the moon, for example, inside a big, obviously artificial thing. A black monolith, say.
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Re:Put it into deep space (Score:5, Insightful)
For something that's actually intended to be an archive, perhaps. But this is expressly designed to be merely a curiosity, not an archive. So why bother going to the tremendous effort of sending it to a different planet?
The information that interests the archaeologists is, more often than not, the information that no one is particularly interested in preserving. Things like records of lawsuits, records of amounts of produce, textbooks used for education ... that kind of thing. Sure, mythological documents are interesting too, but they're likely to be preserved in multiple copies anyway.
Hence, Petrushka's Made-up-on-the-spot Rule One: The documents that a society most wants to preserve are exactly those documents that archaeologists will be the least interested in. Because they know that stuff already. (Sure, there are exceptions for truly ancient civilisations where literally nothing else survives except for official documents, but ...)
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You need a 500x microscope to read it (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, so they include a 6x glas sphere. How nice, but you need a 500x microscope to read it. The sphere has a large base and it can be opened. Why not include the tool to read the document with the document?
Who is to say that whoever finds it in the future has access to such a powerful microscope? For most of history we haven't.
Nice idea, but geez, think things through, this could be found by the same kind of people who made the original rossate stone. Do you really want them to wait hundreds of years to develop magnifcation good enough to read it?
Re:You need a 500x microscope to read it (Score:5, Funny)
Why not include the tool to read the document with the document?
That's how they make their money! It's brilliant! Give away the media for free, then in 2,000 years, sell the 500x microscope "readers" for a *huge* profit! Just make sure the teaser text and critical reviews are readable by the naked eye.
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Re:You need a 500x microscope to read it (Score:5, Insightful)
I would think that it would be some kind of incentive for someone / something to invent a way of reading it. There is already a 6X lens on there. Using that concept, they might reach the 100X mark in a short time period. The better they get, the more they will learn.
One would imagine they'd have included instructions for making said 100x or 750x lenses that were readable with the 6x lens. A form of boot-strapping, if you will.
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Genesis (Score:4, Funny)
That's a lot of Phil Collins - three Genesis albums!
Surely a greater variety would have given a broader view of our world! Maybe some Elton John, and Boney M at least!
Rosetta Archive is a truly a grand achievement. (Score:5, Insightful)
Archive readability (Score:5, Informative)
Just so long as they didn't do what the BBC did in the 1980's with the UK's modern "Doomsday Book" history archive project. The archive went on a Laserdisc, and what hardware today can read that format (not the machines on ebay)?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/11/bbc_domesday_project_saved/ [theregister.co.uk] or
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/preservation/research/domesday.htm/community.htm [nationalarchives.gov.uk]
Re:Archive readability (Score:5, Informative)
This disc is being designed to be read through analog processes.... and in fact the first few words can be read with the naked eye, and gradually get smaller to the point that each attempt to magnify the words shows there is much more on the disc.
Each language that is being used is also given "equal" treatment, other than some languages tend to be much more verbose than others such as Latin languages vs. Germanic languages or even the most efficient being Chinese (in terms of characters per word/idea in the language)
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Only 2000 Years? Pffft (Score:5, Insightful)
The Romans managed to preserve their language and culture for 2000 years completely by accident. Do you really think all the stuff we're doing today will vanish in the same time span.
In far less than 100 years the whole of today's Internet will fit on a single USB stick - smaller than a single shard of Roman pottery.
Re:Only 2000 Years? Pffft (Score:5, Interesting)
The Romans managed to preserve their language and culture for 2000 years completely by accident. Do you really think all the stuff we're doing today will vanish in the same time span.
It wasn't completely by accident - many early Roman and Greek works were deliberately preserved in the monasteries. Compare for example what happened to ancient Carthaginian culture, which is approximately the same age and which was nearly exterminated: about all that we know about them was written by their opponents.
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WTF ? (Score:5, Funny)
replicate the disk promiscuously
Only nerds too long in their basements would use this kind of terminology !
The rest of us would say "make a lot of copies".
Logical next step... (Score:5, Funny)
This sounds great. Now we need one with a copy of Wikipedia on it, so that all human knowledge can be preserved as well.
Re:Logical next step... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, that would be lovely. "Albert Einstein was a scientist who JASON MAYNOR SUCKS COCK developed one of the most important theories..."
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No 2.000 years (Score:5, Interesting)
if you treat this disk the way the original rosetta stone has been treated, nobody will be able to decipher it afterwards. The only reason we were able the rosetta stone: The chars were relatively big. High information density and long lifetime (in any conditions) are contradictions....
Yours, Martin
Re:Pronounce what? (Score:4, Funny)
you start simple and work your way up from there...
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Re:Pronounce what? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Pronounce what? (Score:4, Informative)
Assume an utterly alien audience
Why? The foundation doesn't, they assume an audience of humans in the future. Their goal is to preserve knowledge for our descendants, not for some hypothetical alien archaeologist.
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Re:Should have left out the religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really know the meaning of the words "day" in the original language? No, it's only the Catholic Church and some other prominent so-called "christian" organizations that promote that idea.
On the other hand, Genesis is one of the oldest book in the world that has survived thousands of years with minimal to no copying or translation differences across translations (only difference is in interpretation) since it has been written down. It's also available in almost all religions (the Christian, Jewish and Islamic religions) and languages (anywhere there was an influence of the before mentioned) of this world, it can be found in more than 90% of the world, most likely a translation will survive within 2000 years.
It's also one of those books that has the basic/simplistic/root names (in all those languages) for members of the universe we can see with the naked eye (planet, moon, sun, stars, earth, life, male, female, sea, animals, vegetation) all in those 3 chapters as well as some abstract (religious/social) passages like cursing, naming, unions of man and woman, God, clothing.
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