[talk.bizarre] What medium will be readable in 25 years?

mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu (The Man Who Knew Too Much) (05/08/91)

    I'm not so sure how germane this is to the original question, but
perhaps it's worth poting out that we have thousands and thousands of
useless and intolerably dull contracts and bills of sale and legal
records and whatnot left over from the Babylonians (c. 1500 BC) written
in cuneiform on dried clay tablets, and that no particular care was
taken to preserve this mostly useless junk; it just stuck around of its
own accord.

    Now admittedly cuneiform is a low-density medium, but our
technology's improved a little, and we could probably get quite a few
bits on a slab of clay, or better yet, macro-defect-free cement.

--

   Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum.
Mark-Jason Dominus 	  			    mjd@central.cis.upenn.edu