

Rosetta Disk Designed For 2,000 Years Archive - alexwg
http://www.rosettaproject.org/about-us/disk/concept

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Harkins
The use of a religious text is regrettable, it's a bad first impression to
make on their hypothetical future civilization discovering one.

Otherwise, damn cool. I wish they weren't charging $25,000 for them.

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ilamont
I remember reading about this in the Wall Street Journal about five years ago
when it was still in the early planning stages. It's nice to see that the
project has survived.

One problem, however, is the disks will be very expensive, ranging from $1,000
to $25,000 (see <http://www.rosettaproject.org/about-us/donate/donate>). This
not only prevents interested people from purchasing them, but also interferes
with the ultimate purpose of the disks -- spreading an archive of soon-to-be
lost languages to the widest possible audience, which will ensure that the
record survives across the millennia.

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electromagnetic
Actually, I think it having a fairly high price is a good thing. If everyone
has one it's worthless, granted it would make them exceptionally easy to
discover if there was ever a catastrophic collapse of human civilization.
However, what I get from it is that the project is to get museums and
collectors (vis-a-vis people who'll protect it) to buy them and keep them, so
that when human languages mutate then our ancestors will be able to look at it
and use it to translate other documents.

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Xichekolas
That seems counter-intuitive. The collectors and museums will still buy it
even if it were massed produced and everyone in the world had one in their
pocket. It's just that cool (as far as museums are concerned).

If your goal is to have something that could be found after some catastrophe
(or by future archaeologists), then obviously more are better. But I guess (as
you point out) if your goal is to have something that will spend 500 years in
the Smithsonian on display, rarity is a good thing.

Either way, I imagine the high price has more to do with the cost of making
them than marketing. ;)

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streety
Previous discussion: <http://kk.org/kk/2008/08/very-longterm-backup.php>

