2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com>om>:
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I disagree. The short term utility is obviously
zero, but the long
term utility could be massive. The contents of Wikimedia projects
could play a vital role in rebuilding civilisation - I call that
useful.
Assuming civilization collapses to begin with. And assuming the
collapse is so complete that there are literally no computers left,
even in the hands of the most powerful (who would likely lead
rebuilding efforts). And assuming that civilization doesn't recover
in a short enough period of time that most records will be intact
anyway. And assuming that people can actually find the handful of
disks or whatever that are probably locked up in a vault somewhere.
And assuming they still have microscopes, but not computers. And
assuming they bother to actually look at the disks in a microscope,
instead of melting them down as scrap metal or using them as doorstops
or just dumping them in a landfill. And assuming that vast quantities
of trivia interspersed with incomplete scraps of poorly-explained
science would in fact be useful for rebuilding civilization. (Have
you ever tried to learn anything practical from Wikipedia? Textbooks
would at least be useful.)
Yeah, I'd say virtually zero utility. But if some weirdos want to
waste money on it, that's their business. They can also prepare for
the end of the world in 2012 as predicted by the Mayans, if they like.
I haven't proposed any archive method that would require a microscope
and I don't recommend one. Civilisations have a tendency to collapse,
it has happened numerous times before and it is far from unheard of
for a dark age to follow in which a lot of knowledge is lost.
But rebuilding civilisation is probably not the most likely use such
archives would be put to (it's just the most exciting, so the one I
mentioned). The historical and cultural value 1000 years from now of
knowing what people 1000 years ago knew and thought would be immense.
While useful, functional knowledge would probably have been preserved,
the presentation of that knowledge and all the non-functional
knowledge (our pop culture articles would probably be of most
interest) would probably be lost. Think of the archive as more of a
time capsule than a how-to guide for rebuilding civilisation - the
latter is more fun (and of greater utility if it happens), but the
former is the far more likely utility.