
Ask HN: How can we make the world's code discoverable in 10K years? - 1arity
Global extinction level event, all our culture lost, but we want to keep a record of what we were doing. A library of Alexandria built in this age would contain much computer code. How to archive it in a format that&#x27;s likely to be understood by future civilizations ?
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Mimu
I don't see the value of saving 'code'. Some algorithms maybe but I do believe
the library of Alexandria is about ideas not tools.

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1arity
Minimum description length could be a useful archival principle.

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1arity
An idea is a tool is an idea. Or an idea is a description of a tool. In any
case, code is a history of our time. A computed history. It encodes the way we
thought about things, reflected in the way we arranged our systems of doing
things. There's an argument to be made that it is a highly efficient
description -- it might be possible to accurately rebuild a fallen
civilization if we could read its computer code. At the very least, we'd have
a start on rebuilding its infrastructure. The writings of a time encode its
culture, you can rebuild a culture from that. The Renaissance did this with
the culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Code is a medium, of today. It works
to save that, if we value the preservation of our time.

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airframeng
Same way we have records from 10K years ago, by keeping hard copies.

Pull the plug and all e-records become inaccessible.

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1arity
Yeah, but hard copies on what? Discs, paper, what's the medium with the 10K
year time horizon ?

Wait, I got it. Stone Tablets. Just have to get a Google project off the
ground to inscribe all the worlds code in slate.

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imauld
Considering all the bits and pieces of plastic we have manufactured will be
around on this planet until well after we are gone I would take a guess at
saying plastic film would be best.

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bbcbasic
Bitcoin blockchain!

