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