When I think about the enormous amount of digital data we’re gathering as a species, I get the same uneasy feeling as when someone keeps all their files on a single laptop — with no backup.
In 3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke suggests that a large electromagnetic pulse erased vast amounts of data from humanity’s digital memory banks. Digital data, for all its abundance, is fragile — vulnerable to time, power loss, and catastrophic events.
I keep thinking that we might need a non-digital way to archive and preserve digital data. Here would be what I consider the requirements:
- Stores digital information.
- Write once.
- Is not liable to electromagnetic pulses.
- Doesn’t require power or water to be stable.
- Fire-proof and relatively water-proof.
- Can exist for 500/1000 years.
- Doesn’t have particular temperature or atmosphere requirements (anywhere between -100/100C and 0 to 10 atmospheres).