I would include all US patent information. Possibly an AI could filter this to include only ‘important patents’ since it’s a large archive but in any case it’s vital information.
So far as the computers, digital content and software are concerned… this may not remain usable. One critical part of this effort could be designing and building perdurable computer hardware so that the archive could contain one or more computers built to last for a hundred years. But I don’t know how feasible this is—swapping out a few things like fans, electrolytic capacitors, thermal paste etc. that have a known limited lifetime is not too difficult, but if you need to re-engineer an SSD from the ground up to increase MTBF to two centuries… that’s hard. I guess if failures are purely stochastic you can just pump up the redundancy to a fantastic degree.
Broadly speaking I would favor print media for this reason. Worth keeping in mind is that advanced industries have their own complex ontogeny. If population is reduced to the extent you describe, knowledge of post-1950 technology could mostly be useless to them for many generations (except as a guide to using scavenged artifacts). Even building something like a functioning railroad requires an entire small civilization.
Nice! (fwiw I’d probably aim to keep all of them and not filter)
So far as the computers, digital content and software are concerned… this may not remain usable
We can discuss on better solutions here, though this will be a premature optimization. I’d be perfectly happy if figured we’d need to “refresh digital hardware” every 20 years or so. This seems cheaper and easier than improving SSD technology to reach an MTBF of a few centuries.
Broadly speaking I would favor print media for this reason.
The intention is to do both, and optimistically the digital media survives and the situation will be vastly more positive than print only.
I would include all US patent information. Possibly an AI could filter this to include only ‘important patents’ since it’s a large archive but in any case it’s vital information.
So far as the computers, digital content and software are concerned… this may not remain usable. One critical part of this effort could be designing and building perdurable computer hardware so that the archive could contain one or more computers built to last for a hundred years. But I don’t know how feasible this is—swapping out a few things like fans, electrolytic capacitors, thermal paste etc. that have a known limited lifetime is not too difficult, but if you need to re-engineer an SSD from the ground up to increase MTBF to two centuries… that’s hard. I guess if failures are purely stochastic you can just pump up the redundancy to a fantastic degree.
Broadly speaking I would favor print media for this reason. Worth keeping in mind is that advanced industries have their own complex ontogeny. If population is reduced to the extent you describe, knowledge of post-1950 technology could mostly be useless to them for many generations (except as a guide to using scavenged artifacts). Even building something like a functioning railroad requires an entire small civilization.
Nice! (fwiw I’d probably aim to keep all of them and not filter)
We can discuss on better solutions here, though this will be a premature optimization. I’d be perfectly happy if figured we’d need to “refresh digital hardware” every 20 years or so. This seems cheaper and easier than improving SSD technology to reach an MTBF of a few centuries.
The intention is to do both, and optimistically the digital media survives and the situation will be vastly more positive than print only.