[xkcd 1683] Digital Data

[naughty_not_bad@lemmynsfw.com]

Hey check this cool meme out!

[ourkaos@lemmy.today]

Heh, heh...

The Bits of Theseus

[buddahriffic@lemmy.world]

One other possibility that just occurred to me is to encode it into living DNA along with better error correction mechanisms so it doesn't mutate. Like thinking from a "leave data for future civilizations to find" perspective, though it could also be a decent long term passive(ish) archival. Maybe completely passive if a self-sustaining but isolated environment could be created for it.

Not great for data you want to keep but also actively use, though. Or data you want to be able to modify.

[dacrazyjamez@sh.itjust.works]

We have stone tablets from back when humans invebted written language. I vote we back up critical data using this method.

[buddahriffic@lemmy.world]

Yeah, though it has that issue with data density. The denser the data, the more likely it will become degraded from erosion or chipping.

Also if there's a discontinuity between our civilization and a future one, the denser the data, the less likely any future civilization would discover it's there, even if it still has enough integrity to be read.

[stevedice@sh.itjust.works]

That really doesn't matter when someone screenshots your JPEG-XL and posts it in a website that transcodes it to WEBP and adds a water mark.

[linuxenjoyer@lemmy.world]

I think there’s a good chance that a lot of the knowledge we have today could be lost entirely if civilization collapses to a certain degree just due to how we store it.

We do have some backups.

Arctic Vault

Preserving open source software for future generations

GitHub Archive Program (archiveprogram.github.com)

[lovablesidekick@lemmy.world]

About that... we could record someone's every word and different people would read entirely different things into it. Consider how strangers have reacted to your own internet comments.

[amon@lemmy.world]

[absolutechicagodog@lemm.ee]

Ray Bradbury famously directly told people they were interpreting Fahrenheit 451 wrong while he was alive and they still didn't believe it

[bakerbagel@midwest.social]

Bradbury just complained that people were gonna stop buying his books. He gripes in multiple books that people dont read anymore since that's how he made money.

[idkwhatusernametoputherelolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

[giveover@feddit.uk]

No vehicles in the park

[kittycat@lemmy.world]

[nytarsha@lemmy.sdf.org]

The media on the internet will all eventually be behind a paywall. It seems like we're heading in that direction.

[confusedbythebasics@lemmy.world]

Needs more jpeg.

[archrecord@lemm.ee]

[triflingtoad@sh.itjust.works]

I love how unoriginal the human brain is sometimes. I had the same exact thing I was about to comment

[tibi@lemmy.world]

Only downside is that only data that people care about right now is being saved. But what seems useless now might become valuable in the future. It's hard to grasp how much data has been forgotten on some old computers, or some CDs, or websites that have gone dark.

[tibi@lemmy.world]

But converting from a format to another is a lossy process. It's best to just keep whatever original format you have, unless you are creating the images yourself.