About (very) long term preservation.

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I was thinking yesterday: when we're considering preservation (video game and any other media/art forms) we're only thinking in short term or human-scale time length.

What about centuries, no, millennia of human and geological History. Even if we secure things in a bunker the planet will still have earthquakes and volcanoes.

When it comes to several hundred of millennia and billions of years the planet will get absorbed by the growing Red Giant.

Maybe launching data into space or other exoplanets could work for those but then again we'll have black holes, (super)novae and gamma ray bursts among other things that could erase it.

We still got time but we can already start thinking about that today.

 

[skramz]

all that just so the future generation can experience cheetahmen? i call bust!

 

[redux007]

all that just so the future generation can experience cheetahmen? i call bust!

 

[Leon]

Nothing in this world lasts forever, on the religious side we're told this from the outset, that this world in this form is temporary and will eventually end, but for non-religious, especially for more agnostic/atheistic mindsets, the idea of a finite universe is alot for the mind to handle considering the sheer size and timescales at play here.
I should, however, point out that even modern science says eventually the universe will end, the amount of time is hard to comprehend, but it is a set in stone truth.

And as it should be, if things lasted truly forever, then human growth would end, we would become slaves to the past, never truly advancing, human beings are by design constantly trying to learn and advance, hitting a brick wall has been terrible for humanity imo, we start losing the will to live as we are by nature a curious species.

I must point out that NOTHING stays static, earth 5000 years ago had a much different climate than we do today, with the fertile crescent being far more tropical than the desert it is today.

As for preservation methods, there's a few options, the best option would be currently diamond encoding which can theoretically last up to 10k years, but even that is useless if you have no way of decoding it. which requires modern technology.

Also i need to point out that science currently is more of the belief that earth will not be consumed by the sun, but will come close, and be scorched by it, but still probably survive the red giant phase, though it has not ruled it out either, though i should point out estimates currently are that earth has 100 million years left of habitability if things continue on the same path.

 

[TheMinuMaster]

Sometimes I think about that too, about how sad it is to know that nowadays we’ve lost so much knowledge. So many books were lost — and at some point, I know it was done on purpose. I also think about physical games and how, in about 200 years, an entire physical medium will become a relic. It’s sad to think about that. But then I think about other things, like whether our current history will be preserved or if the “winner” will change it. There’s so much madness happening in our world right now, and nothing guarantees that people will know what really happened.

 

[χKai]

I don't give a fuck if the world explodes tomorrow.
There is no need for me to care about any of this, and I could easily and would gladly do without.
I hate the world and everything in it, except one thing..

Life.

And even that's full of nothing but garbage. Only a handful of exceptions exist, and other than them it's mostly a metric fuckton of worthless cowards I could care less for, that care even less for me.
But I don't mind if they care for me or not, it's not about that. Everything in this world is failure, and a world without justice just ain't worth livin' in.

So I'd rather die taking as many of those assholes as I can with me to hell.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

No idea why I got in a sad mood when it's Xmas eve but I didn't want to forget about this issue (especially considering the Repo/CD Romance's main goal).

I also wanted to say that despite how old this movie is I still remember this scene because of how shocking it actually was compared to the rest (at around 1:30):

For context he's a time traveller who ended up in the year 802,701.

 

[beefbowl]

when we're considering preservation (video game and any other media/art forms) we're only thinking in short term or human-scale time length.

Because things are meaningful as long as humans exist. No other human form will experience any art made by humans the same way as we do. We are the main characters, history doesnt exist outside of humans.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Because things are meaningful as long as humans exist. No other human form will experience any art made by humans the same way as we do.

Either humans or any sapient species (if there's any other after us obviously).

We are the main characters, history doesn't exist outside of humans.

Written History yes. Geological history can still be a good indication of how life used to be long ago.

It's weird how things that are very ancient to us (like the Egyptian Pyramids) are quite recent in the history of the planet

At least we have time to fix the Y10K issue

Year 10,000 problem - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

simple.wikipedia.org

 

[beefbowl]

Geological history can still be a good indication of how life used to be long ago.

It's just the way world exists. We only care about human history because it is meaningful to us. Mountains or rocks doesnt remember how they were before. But we do, through art and other means.

Once humans stop existing, things made by humans lost their meaning. The way of life, collective experiences and history is not there to give meaning to anything. Animals, bacteria or aliens dont care about man-made things.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

All that just so the future generation can experience cheetahmen? i call bust!

Imagine unearthing an old USB key to notice it's Action 52.

 

[Adachi_08]

So I'd rather die taking as many of those assholes as I can with me to hell.

Bro chill

 

[diapered]

I thought we were talking about data storage

Maybe launching data into space or other exoplanets could work for those but then again we'll have black holes, (super)novae and gamma ray bursts among other things that could erase it.

True, but also a more mundane reason that won't work is just general cosmic radiation. Even though satellites are engineered with radiation shielding they can be critically damaged from cosmic rays. The same would apply especially to any flash (ssd) or magnetic type of storage. Even optical storage is effected, though it is a little more resilient, so even an m-disc which can theoretically store data for ~1000years wouldn't last as long if shot into space.

Interestingly, the optical technology used in an m-disk could probably store data for even longer (they claim 10k years!), the problem is that even stored in ideal conditions that plastics will have degraded enough to make it unsuitable for data storage: polymer chains can only hold together so long

As for preservation methods, there's a few options, the best option would be currently diamond encoding which can theoretically last up to 10k years, but even that is useless if you have no way of decoding it. which requires modern technology.

Huh, I have never heard of that. Interesting.

Regardless how the data is stored, we currently can only understand data as a string of 0 and 1, and if there is a way to change them initially, there is a probability it will always flip EVEN in the absence of something external like cosmic rays: because of entropy, there is a non zero probability proportional to the Boltzman factor for anything stored at a finite temperature. Yes, if you had a storage device held near absolute zero, that would work, but the problem is that all material properties radically change as you approach those temperatures (for example, metals become superconducting and plastics would become so brittle they would disintegrate) and it is unknown of how to use those properties for data storage.

So humanity needs to either master low temperature physics or formulate/engineer an abstraction of data that goes beyond binary physical implementation to accomplish data storage on geological timescales like you propose. I know qbits for quantum computers are not binary as they exist as an entangled superposition, but I don't know if they are proposed as a solution to long term data storage....