20 Mar
2013
20 Mar
'13
5:06 p.m.
I don't believe that people 1000 years from now
will put the same
value towards items from today as we put towards items from 1000
years ago.
The same? No. We have only the vaguest idea how year 3000 will view
year 2000 - look at how large the changes from 1000 to 2000 have been,
and the second derivative shows no hint of going negative anytime in
the foreseeable future.
While preservation of data is important, nowadays we
have pretty much
world-wide information coverage (thanks to the Internet and superior
transport).
Of all the lists I would not expect to see such a position advanced on,
this is one of the first. Just ask anyone who's trying to find
_anything_ about old hardware. Sometimes the company doesn't even
exist any longer and it's pretty close to impossible to figure out who
their successor-in-interest is and/or who currently has possession of
the data, if indeed it still exists. Sometimes it does but doesn't
even know it ever made the hardware in question and certainly doesn't
know anything about it. Sometimes they just won't say anything, even
if you offer to go NDA. And in the remaining two cases... :-)
Anything important will be propagated into the future
For what value of "important"? We have just about zero idea what year
3000 humans - if they exist - will consider important, possibly
excepting their own survival.
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