Hello, people of the future! Please unfreeze us, and give us warm soup! We’ll be very grateful! Thanks much.
Seriously, though, I wonder about the ability of future archeologists to dig through historical Internet information. At the moment, the only attempt to create a thorough historical archive of the Internet is the Wayback machine, and since (I estimate) that the growth of the Internet is accelerating faster than the cheapness of reliable long-term storage, they’ll either have to get lots more funding or start being more selective about what they archive.
In terms of the ability to maintain information of interest to future archaeologists through a straight-up global disaster, the Internet isn’t any better than paper. Maybe we need to start looking into cuneiform printers...
I think that getting the grave found at the other end is a less serious problem than building it to last. If they have nanotech, they can explore the entire surface of the earth in great detail, including doing an ultrasound scan of the entire crust. Also the thing would have a magnetic signature, being metallic. And if you were really concerned, you could build in a powerful permanent magnet, which would make it even more detectable. You could even use temperature differentials to power a weak radio transmitter, but honestly that’s probably making it too easy to find. Better to have a whole host of slight anomalies.
Hello, people of the future! Please unfreeze us, and give us warm soup! We’ll be very grateful! Thanks much.
Seriously, though, I wonder about the ability of future archeologists to dig through historical Internet information. At the moment, the only attempt to create a thorough historical archive of the Internet is the Wayback machine, and since (I estimate) that the growth of the Internet is accelerating faster than the cheapness of reliable long-term storage, they’ll either have to get lots more funding or start being more selective about what they archive.
In terms of the ability to maintain information of interest to future archaeologists through a straight-up global disaster, the Internet isn’t any better than paper. Maybe we need to start looking into cuneiform printers...
I think that getting the grave found at the other end is a less serious problem than building it to last. If they have nanotech, they can explore the entire surface of the earth in great detail, including doing an ultrasound scan of the entire crust. Also the thing would have a magnetic signature, being metallic. And if you were really concerned, you could build in a powerful permanent magnet, which would make it even more detectable. You could even use temperature differentials to power a weak radio transmitter, but honestly that’s probably making it too easy to find. Better to have a whole host of slight anomalies.