Written in Diamond

By | May 14, 2007
3 Comments

Via InstaPundit, author Charles Stross has some interesting things to say about the future:

This century we’re going to learn a lesson about what it means to be unable to forget anything. And it’s going to go on, and on. Barring a catastrophic universal collapse of human civilization — which I should note was widely predicted from August 1945 onward, and hasn’t happened yet — we’re going to be laying down memories in diamond that will outlast our bones, and our civilizations, and our languages. Sixty kilograms will handily sum up the total history of the human species, up to the year 2000. From then on … we still don’t need much storage, in bulk or mass terms. There’s no reason not to massively replicate it and ensure that it survives into the deep future.

And with ubiquitous lifelogs, and the internet, and attempts at providing a unified interface to all interesting information — wikipedia, let’s say — we’re going to give future historians a chance to build an annotated, comprehensive history of the entire human race. Charting the relationships and interactions between everyone who’s ever lived since the dawn of history — or at least, the dawn of the new kind of history that is about to be born this century.

And just imagine all the alternative versions of that story that they’ll be able to model!

  • MikeD

    When Google Chat is “off the record” is it really not recorded, or is it *marked* off the record? Much like a database record that is marked deleted, it can be easily recovered. With the mission of Google to capture all knowable data and intelligently present the relevant points, how likely is it that our chats are feeding Google’s emerging AI with the ‘human record’ of a world’s worth of interpersonal communication?

    If this data were preserved then cast upon the flotsam and jetsam of the public internet, would anyone ever read them? Will our ability to meaningfully consume ever catch up to the pace at which we produce?

  • Karl Hallowell

    No offense but sixty years isn’t that long for a civilization. I don’t think it likely for the next few decades, but nuclear weapons alone introduce enough uncertainty here to make a modest insurance against the collapse of civilization a good idea.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Karl,

    I don’t think Stross would disagree with you — the idea being that if we avoid that calamity for a few more decades, we’ll at least have a good backup record of civilization. I don’t think he’s suggesting that the fact that it hasn’t happened is any kind of guarantee that it won’t.

    MikeD,

    I’m reminded of a scene from the book Cheaper by the Dozen. Mr. Gilbreth has taught all 12 of his kids morse code. They all think it’s pretty neat, and spend a good deal of time tapping out messages on table tops and walls around the house. The problem is, they are all way more interested in sending messages than they are receiving them, so nobody is actually listening to anyone else’s signal. I think those chat records are probably a lot like that (although more interactive at the time they are created)– interesting and fun to make, but of limited use for any receiver farther down the line.