[Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at 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.