23 Mar
2013
23 Mar
'13
6:24 p.m.
But media life won't help without preserved info
about content. Look
how long it took to decipher hieroglyphics (they got lucky with a
multi-language tablet ("Rosetta stone")
...and all because Cleopatra was the first one of the Ptolemaic dynasty
(and almost the last of the dynasty) who could write and speak Egyptian.
Before her, the Ptolomeys spoke Macedonian. Ancient Egypt was largely
ruled by non-Egyptians. I've long thought it odd that today we take
the lives and artifacts of the rulers as being "Egyptian culture".
Addressing Fred's question is "who will care what the MZ at the front of
an .EXE file will signify in even 100 years?" I remember all sorts of
stuff that seemed at the time useful and important. Mostly nobody cares
today.
Do you really think that we'll have discrete things called "executable
files" that are prepared by a process called "compiling" or
"assembling"? Will anyone even think that VisiCalc was a major piece of
software?
Immortality is a fleeting thing.
--Chuck