I'm speaking in comparison to this topic.


I was reading through some tech articles yesterday and ran across this one. It has been said many times that technology is always advancing and is not going slow down any time soon, so while the 300GB Blu-ray successor is currently being pushed, the (far?) future looks like this: Superman memory crystal: 5D nano-glass to preserve data for million years


We all remember the data crystals from Superman that contained ridiculous amounts of knowledge (if, by our terms, it was all video.) The University of Southampton, Britain, has developed a way to "etch" data into special glass in 5D (the other two dimensions being refraction and polarization.) These new discs, if made the same size as a regular CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc, could contain 360TB of data--that's 1,200 times larger than the Sony/Panasonic product.

The discs can also withstand heat of up to 1,000°C (1,832°F) and, being glass, [they say] are not susceptible to degradation (or "rot") meaning the disc can potentially last for a million years. One professor, Peter G. Kazansky, states, "It is thrilling to think that we have created the first document which will likely survive the human race. This technology can secure the last evidence of civilization: all we've learnt will not be forgotten."

With that statement, my question is this: how will aliens or the next civilization know how to read it? How would they even know it's a data-storage disc? They may think it's a toy. It's not like there will be a manual that they can follow, and it's not simple. Even if the discs lasted a million years, the devices for reading it wouldn't. This makes the idea of post-apocalyptic preservation moot, doesn't it? The Rosetta Stone was key in helping us with ancient language, but that's because we only had to look at it with our eyes without any special technology.

But, in the present, it sounds amazing.

Quoting Blair:

Quote:
One professor, Peter G. Kazansky, states, "It is thrilling to think that we have created the first document which will likely survive the human race. This technology can secure the last evidence of civilization: all we've learnt will not be forgotten."

With that statement, my question is this: how will aliens or the next civilization know how to read it? How would they even know it's a data-storage disc? They may think it's a toy. It's not like there will be a manual that they can follow, and it's not simple. Even if the discs lasted a million years, the devices for reading it wouldn't.

When planning for this kind of thing, we have to use our own archaeological methods and mode of thinking as a baseline for providing clues to anyone in the future for decoding what we leave behind.  For instance, we know that the ancient Egyptians consider certain things to be significant through their ritual preservation.  Aliens or our descendants aren't going to think they're toys if we expend significant resources to preserve them in a specially-constructed repository.  And because of our curiosity over Egyptian artifacts, scholars spend years trying to decode their messages, using modern technology to help decipher them.  I would imagine if we make the objects tantalizing enough, the beings that find them would be curious enough to try and construct their own device to read them, provided we leave some kind of clue.  A mathematical formula etched on the disc hub, for example.

Think Voyager probe meets Indiana Jones.  :D