Re:'Five-dimensional' glass discs could store data for billi...
by YeGoblynQueenne on Sunday February 21, 2016 @10:03AM
(#11144734)
>> I would also challenge the basic assumption you seem to be making, that science would advance exactly as it did last time.
I think I'm worried that science will _not_ advance exactly as it did last time. Right now we have two things: a) the technology to create the physical medium of the message and b) the technology to encode it in a way that is efficient in terms of its storage.
Who's to say that future generations will have both (a) and (b) at the time they come across the message? If they don't, then either they will not recognise it for what it is, or they will not be able to read it, or both.
>> they'd still leap forward 200 years in whatever they find.
Even if there's no collapse, I assume the future will like to know a few things about the past, but of course we can't know. Maybe the future is a boot stepping on a human face, forever and such things as history are not allowed. That would be a development entirely unrelated to technological means, but that would defeat any planning based on assumptions about future technologies. And unfortunately we can't really do much about it except, I don't know- form secret societies for the preservation of knowledge? Like in Nightfall [1]? :/
I think I'm worried that science will _not_ advance exactly as it did last time. Right now we have two things: a) the technology to create the physical medium of the message and b) the technology to encode it in a way that is efficient in terms of its storage.
Who's to say that future generations will have both (a) and (b) at the time they come across the message? If they don't, then either they will not recognise it for what it is, or they will not be able to read it, or both.
>> they'd still leap forward 200 years in whatever they find.
Even if there's no collapse, I assume the future will like to know a few things about the past, but of course we can't know. Maybe the future is a boot stepping on a human face, forever and such things as history are not allowed. That would be a development entirely unrelated to technological means, but that would defeat any planning based on assumptions about future technologies. And unfortunately we can't really do much about it except, I don't know- form secret societies for the preservation of knowledge? Like in Nightfall [1]? :/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_%28Asimov_short_stor...