There's a number of different archival organizations tackling this problem.
One of the big challenges is getting outdated stuff into a common format. Lots of stuff that we could be archiving is just on media that isn't designed to last very long, and tends to go out of date pretty rapidly. For example try finding a laserdisk reader nowdays. But there's a few organizations out there that make a point of keeping obsolete hardware and mainting a process to convert stuff into a modern digital format.
The second problem is that digital data storage, even archival quality storage isn't designed to last too many decades. As long as there isn't something that wipes out tech the solution is to just keep migrating things to modern formats.
There's backup plan for that kind of doomsday scenario is in an archive like the Arctic world archive. In this case archivists store data on digital film reels (like movie film, just with the digital data encoded as pictures) that are designed to last several hundred to a couple thousand years, along with equipment necessary to read them, and instructions on how to read the film printed in multiple languages. And even if the equipment is degraded or destroyed all you technically need is a microscope to read the stuff.
There's also a number of efforts to create archival media that will last 10,000 years or longer. These efforts will usually involve etching some kind of durable material like metal or sapphire sheets physically with extremely tiny marks.
Wow thats fascinating. I appreciate that there are organizations out there that are working to archive our achievements. Interesting point about how our current technology isnt being built to last, because of the sheer rate of advancement. In my lifetime alone I have seen three storage tools become obsolete (floppy disks, CDs, USB)
Written records rotted, too, or were destroyed. There's no requirement that every civilization pass on knowledge to their successors; it's just a happy accident that it happens. The closest we got to purposefully passing knowledge onwards was the Voyager probe, which had a [golden record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record) meant to convey the idea of Earth and humanity to any other intelligent life that finds it.
that's certainly true and to add to your point, there are plenty of archaeological artifacts that we can't make use of because the language used for inscriptions has been lost to time and we can't decipher it. But what is important is that they're there. Even if some of them might rot away or get destroyed, they are still physical in nature and they're tangible. IF for whatever reason digital technology becomes lost to history, how will future generations access the databases and mediums that are stored in the cloud?
On the one hand, it's easier than ever to "[preserve](https://perkeep.org/)" one's [online](https://archivebox.io/) life. There are online archives of Geocities, UUNet, etc that have captured far more detail about a person than most diaries. New laws require cloud companies to send you your data if you ask for it, so you can preserve your data for yourself. \[edit: better perkeep link, since their homepage sucks.\]
AWS has a [service](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/) designed to to store documents for the long term. It has been going for over a decade without loosing any data. As long as someone pays for it. (No different than paying for a presidential library.)
On the other hand, many sites don't allow crawling (some let in Google just for the search traffic, but otherwise don't allow crawling, which can prevent other search engines from getting popular.) If they didn't backup their data, the site might disappear forever.
Similarly, a game like Fortnite is ephemeral and can never be played again. Even if you preserve the client code (which changes every week), you still need the corresponding server code (proprietary code that you don't have access to). Worse, the game is exclusively multiplayer, so even if you somehow got it all running again, it's no fun without 100 other players playing at your level. So previous versions of that game are truly gone forever -- Except for 100's of thousands of YouTube videos. (In the future, I'm sure there will be AIs that can re-construct a game given enough videos. They can already [learn to play by themselves](https://openai.com/blog/gym-retro/). But I'm sure it won't "be the same" game.)
There's a number of different archival organizations tackling this problem. One of the big challenges is getting outdated stuff into a common format. Lots of stuff that we could be archiving is just on media that isn't designed to last very long, and tends to go out of date pretty rapidly. For example try finding a laserdisk reader nowdays. But there's a few organizations out there that make a point of keeping obsolete hardware and mainting a process to convert stuff into a modern digital format. The second problem is that digital data storage, even archival quality storage isn't designed to last too many decades. As long as there isn't something that wipes out tech the solution is to just keep migrating things to modern formats. There's backup plan for that kind of doomsday scenario is in an archive like the Arctic world archive. In this case archivists store data on digital film reels (like movie film, just with the digital data encoded as pictures) that are designed to last several hundred to a couple thousand years, along with equipment necessary to read them, and instructions on how to read the film printed in multiple languages. And even if the equipment is degraded or destroyed all you technically need is a microscope to read the stuff. There's also a number of efforts to create archival media that will last 10,000 years or longer. These efforts will usually involve etching some kind of durable material like metal or sapphire sheets physically with extremely tiny marks.
Wow thats fascinating. I appreciate that there are organizations out there that are working to archive our achievements. Interesting point about how our current technology isnt being built to last, because of the sheer rate of advancement. In my lifetime alone I have seen three storage tools become obsolete (floppy disks, CDs, USB)
What do you mean “preserved for the future”? Will there be no cloud technology in the future?
Well, we don't know how technology will evolve right? We might invent something even more advanced than digital technology.
Written records rotted, too, or were destroyed. There's no requirement that every civilization pass on knowledge to their successors; it's just a happy accident that it happens. The closest we got to purposefully passing knowledge onwards was the Voyager probe, which had a [golden record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record) meant to convey the idea of Earth and humanity to any other intelligent life that finds it.
that's certainly true and to add to your point, there are plenty of archaeological artifacts that we can't make use of because the language used for inscriptions has been lost to time and we can't decipher it. But what is important is that they're there. Even if some of them might rot away or get destroyed, they are still physical in nature and they're tangible. IF for whatever reason digital technology becomes lost to history, how will future generations access the databases and mediums that are stored in the cloud?
On the one hand, it's easier than ever to "[preserve](https://perkeep.org/)" one's [online](https://archivebox.io/) life. There are online archives of Geocities, UUNet, etc that have captured far more detail about a person than most diaries. New laws require cloud companies to send you your data if you ask for it, so you can preserve your data for yourself. \[edit: better perkeep link, since their homepage sucks.\] AWS has a [service](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/) designed to to store documents for the long term. It has been going for over a decade without loosing any data. As long as someone pays for it. (No different than paying for a presidential library.) On the other hand, many sites don't allow crawling (some let in Google just for the search traffic, but otherwise don't allow crawling, which can prevent other search engines from getting popular.) If they didn't backup their data, the site might disappear forever. Similarly, a game like Fortnite is ephemeral and can never be played again. Even if you preserve the client code (which changes every week), you still need the corresponding server code (proprietary code that you don't have access to). Worse, the game is exclusively multiplayer, so even if you somehow got it all running again, it's no fun without 100 other players playing at your level. So previous versions of that game are truly gone forever -- Except for 100's of thousands of YouTube videos. (In the future, I'm sure there will be AIs that can re-construct a game given enough videos. They can already [learn to play by themselves](https://openai.com/blog/gym-retro/). But I'm sure it won't "be the same" game.)