The world's reserves of knowledge - invincible?

[latent aaaack]

Last year construction begun on a doomsday seedbank on a remote Norwegian island that is to be completed in 2008. Ignoring the issue of its likelihood of ever being needed, what I would like to know is, what would it take to eradicate the physically recorded scientific and cultural data that humans have built up over all the millenia? Could any of worst-case scenario unlikely threats that this seedbank is designed to protect seeds against also threaten the world's stores of knowledge? If 90% of the world dropped dead and the rest abandoned most scholastic work for thousands of years or today's developed societies underwent a decline and collapse similar to ancient societies', how many of any surviving books and hard drives could still be readable when humans finally came back to them?



"The Svalbard International Seed Vault's mission is to store as many seeds known to humans as possible, under the terms of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The goal is to prevent important agricultural and wild plants from becoming rare or extinct in the event of a global disaster such as global warming, a meteorite strike, nuclear or biological warfare, or gene pollution from transgenic plants. There are already over 1400 local seedbanks around the world, but many are in politically unstable or environmentally threatened nations. When this seedbank is built, the vault will be secure and isolated from much of the world's population."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

 

[Cuddles]

A knowledge bank would be useless. Think of the problem of disposing of nuclear waste. No-one can come up with a definite way to convey just the concept of "danger". So far the best idea has been to build essentially a large temple with engravings showing people dying and being scared. Considering how difficult just one fundamental concept is, how could we possibly manage to write down all of human knowledge in a way that would actually be understandable centuries from now? Bear in mind that if the knowledge bank were actually to be needed it would necessarily be because of the loss of much of that knowledge, including, possibly, that required to understand it.

Edit: Incidentally I think the seed banks are all a big waste of time and money as well.

 

[PixyMisa]

Incidentally I think the seed banks are all a big waste of time and money as well.

But at least you can eat them.

 

[tsg]

I voted for all four, only because I could.

In order to read the information off a hard drive, they would have to know how it was encoded (as well as how to retrieve it) and that there was anything there to read. I would suspect if both those survived armageddon, so would most of our knowledge.

 

[IMST]

I voted yes. It's a fun concept. The big issue, of course, is how to store it. Everything seems to be going electronic now, but that's obviously not a good idea for a post apocalypse recovery. So left with books and the like for realistic retrival, how do you keep them from decaying, even in Svalbaard? What language(s)? Is it more or less confusing to a future discoverer to use more than one language when they try to decipher it?
All that mess being said, we know some cool things and I would hate to see us neglect to try to preserve it in case some of the not cool things we know kill us all/most.

 

[Complexity]

Check out http://www.longnow.org/ .

Very very cool clock, interesting project, and they've figured out the recording medium issue.

 

[mhaze]

Last year construction begun on a doomsday seedbank on a remote Norwegian island that is to be completed in 2008. Ignoring the issue of its likelihood of ever being needed, what I would like to know is, what would it take to eradicate the physically recorded scientific and cultural data that humans have built up over all the millenia? Could any of worst-case scenario unlikely threats that this seedbank is designed to protect seeds against also threaten the world's stores of knowledge? If 90% of the world dropped dead and the rest abandoned most scholastic work for thousands of years or today's developed societies underwent a decline and collapse similar to ancient societies', how many of any surviving books and hard drives could still be readable when humans finally came back to them?

No.

you can't regress mankind to where he must rediscover fire.

reading, writing and math are the same.

 

[PogoPedant]

Is it more or less confusing to a future discoverer to use more than one language when they try to decipher it?

It's less confusing. Think Rosetta Stone.

Next problem!

 

[g4macdad]

Last year construction begun on a doomsday seedbank on a remote Norwegian island that is to be completed in 2008. Ignoring the issue of its likelihood of ever being needed, what I would like to know is, what would it take to eradicate the physically recorded scientific and cultural data that humans have built up over all the millenia? Could any of worst-case scenario unlikely threats that this seedbank is designed to protect seeds against also threaten the world's stores of knowledge? If 90% of the world dropped dead and the rest abandoned most scholastic work for thousands of years or today's developed societies underwent a decline and collapse similar to ancient societies', how many of any surviving books and hard drives could still be readable when humans finally came back to them?



"The Svalbard International Seed Vault's mission is to store as many seeds known to humans as possible, under the terms of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The goal is to prevent important agricultural and wild plants from becoming rare or extinct in the event of a global disaster such as global warming, a meteorite strike, nuclear or biological warfare, or gene pollution from transgenic plants. There are already over 1400 local seedbanks around the world, but many are in politically unstable or environmentally threatened nations. When this seedbank is built, the vault will be secure and isolated from much of the world's population."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

Who will decide what knowledge is worthy or even factual?! Wikipedia?

 

[mhaze]

Man cannot regress to where he does not know how to read or write.

All the methods of producing beer, wine, and whiskey are in writing.

Therefore reading and writing are required for survival.