One problem with microcompression of information is that it takes less damage to make the information unusable. We've found this with microfilm. Consider Mount Rushmore. If we reduced it down to the size where we need an electron microscope to see it, then it's made from a tiny fraction of the atoms required for the original. Now the range of sizes that we can look at with an EM range in size from an insect (a favorite SEM project among biomed photography students at RIT) down to a few atoms. Suppose that we lean towards the larger side and say that we reproduce Mount Rushmore using a quadrillion atoms of titanium (digital people might of it as one peta-atom of titanium.) that amounts to (in round numbers) eight-ten millionths of a gram of titanium. How much damage would it take to completely obliterate the image?
As a general rule of thumb as portability and data compression go up, stability goes down. Petroglyphs are neither easily portable nor can you really compress data into them, but they do last a long time (as long as a group of French Boy Scouts don't try to clean them). As we developed language and writing, we went to animal skins certainly lighter and we could compress more information, but not as stable as rock. We more to organic fibers as paper and step up in portability, but stability goes down. Photographs increased data compression, but decreased stability somewhat. How much data is in a movie DVD expressed in tons of petroglyph written stone? What is their relative data stability?
-Doug
Douglas Nishimura
Image Permanence Institute
Rochester Institute of Technology
-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Records Management Email
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2016 2:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Friday Pondering - Which would you choose for looooong term storage?
Aloha All,
In Hawaii and other ancient cultures, they've preserved their "history" through petroglyphs, etc. I guess pounding details onto stone sounds a bit medieval, but you can't argue the results, as they have stood the test of time...
Of the three media posed, I think Norsam holds the most promise, but it will always get down to the "ability to read" the information after billions of years...Meanwhile, there is a thriving business for stone-cutters. :-)
Have a WONDERFUL ALOHA FRIDAY!
Brian
-----Original Message-----
Subject: Friday Pondering - Which would you choose for looooong term storage?
Background on this. I saw a contract that obligated a person for a billion years (1,000,000,000) so you better get your technology right.
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