On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In that futuristic approach I find it more likely that
there will be no
paper / printer, but instead everthing will be stored into
computers/PDAs and transfered between them. So in the event of the
catastrophe you'd be only able to access it with the surviving devices.
In such a futuristic world, I would expect that the major sources of
power would be things like solar and geothermal that don't require
long-distance supply chains. Then even if the world falls into
anarchy, some well-stocked parts will still have power for a good long
while. So you wouldn't need to actually print it out, you'd have
computers running continuously in some places.
Even if 95% of humanity was wiped out, you'd still have a few hundred
million people. Not one of them is going to be in a position to save
some computers? Even militaries, which are prepared for all sorts of
disasters -- some of which will have computers in multiple
geographically distributed bunkers deep underground with enough fuel
on-site to keep them running for days to years?
You have a copy of wikipedia on your hard disk. You
can access it.
But your computer lifetime is finite. And you also don't know for how
much time you'll still have electric current.
What do you do?
Screw Wikipedia. If I want to preserve useful knowledge, I'll make
sure to safeguard my textbooks. In terms of utility for rebuilding
society, the value of Wikipedia is zero compared to even a tiny
university library. And there are many thousands of university
libraries already conveniently scattered around the world, not a few
of them in subbasements where they'll be resistant to nasty things
happening on the surface.
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of doing it
(or having done it)
makes people feel good, due to the collective sci-fi-like fantasy
implicitly promulgated by the project itself -- a future world of
poverty and decay, saved by the serendipitous discovery of a
time-capsule sent from the past. It's a spectacle, a stunt, and it has
PR value.
I certainly don't begrudge the Long Now Foundation for having done
this with the Rosetta Project, since their primary goal is to
encourage long-term thinking, and expensive stunts are obviously a key
part of that.
But Wikimedia's goals are somewhat different, and we could probably
find some stunts which are more relevant to our mission.
Okay, I can agree with that.