How to avoid steering blindly: The case for a robust repository of human knowledge by Jens C. Niemeyer

I have a much simpler way of preserving knowledge in the event of a global collapse or dark age. It is to place it on more permanent media. Probably the most durable media for preserving knowledge is the clay tablet. Archeologists manage to find these from thousands of years back. The Egyptians made steles going back to 3000BC with stone, and these are readable. Of course we don't want to go back to that sort of thing, but paper printing is probably fairly good. The more modern the form of storage media it seems the less permanent it is.

The digital age is largely producing information that is not terribly valuable. The internet is filled with videos of cats and dogs, bloopers, pornography, social media pages, advertisements and so forth that are not really of any great intellectual depth. If people want to write accounts of what people were thinking and doing for posterity based on these data that could be done now. The percentage of information content that has any depth to it is a diminishing percentage of internet content.

To preserve humanity's basic knowledge content it might just be a matter of maintaining books in print, and of maintaining the technology required to print books. The older the technology it could well be that would serve our purposes for maintaining a durable knowledge base. This should also be duplicated in many places around the world. It is my suspicion that a new form of totalitarianism is beginning to take shape, particularly in the United States, and it would be best to have multiple repositories around the world with the ability to reproduce books. In that way fundamental knowledge is less likely to be lost in "book burnings."

For the long term, I deeply suspect that what we call civilization is really a rather transient period between two stone ages. Our species has been here for 150,000 years and only the last 10,000 in what is called civilization. Even if we manage to maintain civilization a few more centuries that is a blip of time. The duration of our species long into the future could be in the second stone age where it is impossible to build any civilization on a used up world. It make this point in my paper, which discusses the long term prospect for humanity and any intelligent life in the universe. The previous stone age is where the Earth was rich in biodiversity and life. The coming stone age is one where the planet will be depleted, polluted and in a post mass extinction period. Our species is likely engineering the next great mass extinction.

LC

Dear Jens,

I very much enjoyed your essay and I agree with the many others who have rated it as clearly one of the best in this contest. It is also one of the few that is highly complementary to our own proposal to focus on producing better minds and thinking. I think we can create the repositories you propose with a goal of not only storing essential knowledge, but to provide the basis for a capability to use the knowledge therein most wisely and efficiently. In other words, intelligently structured knowledge repositories could be created as part of a longer-term implementation of an overall system that would include specially engineered brains and interfaces to efficiently access the knowledge. If disaster struck (and if there are survivors), the latter stages of the project would be delayed, but with your system as an initial investment, the project could be resumed as soon as the enabling technologies allowed survivors to get back on track.

As an aside, it has been proposed to store information in DNA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_digital_data_storage) and on discs with a claimed 1000 year lifespan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC), but as your essay recognizes, technology to decode these storage media will have to be bootstrapped from access to other enabling information, allowing the production of the necessary decoding technologies.

Many thanks for the unique and thoughtful contribution to this contest. I hope your essay does very well.

All the best,

Preston Estep (and Alex Hoekstra)

The comment above somehow confused us as "Anonymous." I hope the work by us that is to be stored in your eternal database doesn't appear similarly uncredited!

Jens,

I disagree with the idea of half the world spending their lives chiselling data onto clay tablets, they'd never catch up! Your own ideas are much better, but with the information overload we now have I suspect the big problem will be selection!

A good essay, well written and readable if a little short, but you got the point across. While agreeing that information availability is important so a robust and extended archive library may be of use, I must ask if it has very much to do with 'steering' mankind to a better future in terms of finding a better direction and the most direct way to get there.

A rear view mirror is important of course, we need to better learn from our mistakes. Also instructions on how to rebuild after a crash, but if we steer properly perhaps we shouldn't crash. I think the niggling question I have really relates to 'renewal'. Most things in nature are cyclic, possibly even including the universe itself. Plants do better when pruned right back or re-rising from ashes. Certainly AGN's accrete and re-ionize matter.

Do you not agree that much of what we think we 'know' is nonsense (I agree with Einstein about not understanding 1,000th of 1%) so would nor perhaps any humanity surviving a cataclysm be better off with a fresh start, unencumbered by ancient beliefs!?

A nicely written and argued essay in any event, and an original view and topic. I point to a far more direct leap forward in my own. Of course actually getting man to let go of myth and legend and take that leap is another matter! I hope you can get to it. What I have done is sent Bob and Alice instructions to eject the the science database I discuss in capsules, one in the halo to avoid accretion by our AGN next time around! (but that's another paper).

Best wishes, and best of luck in the coming roller coaster run in!

Peter

Jens,

I see the new server's inherited the old one's bad habits. T'was I.

Peter

Hi Jens,

You present a series of excellent ideas, and I would be happy to see you win the whole contest. It is clearly vital that we ensure that future generations have access to current knowledge.

I advocate in my article that we also develop the technology that would be necessary to access the kinds of information that nature might allow us to access from the future. I derive the operational characteristics of a useful and logically possible kind of future-viewing machine, after showing that a certain naive kind of future-viewing machine is logically impossible. Once something is shown to be logically possible, it at least has a chance of being physically possible. Near the end of my paper, and in technical note ten, I discuss some of the benefits of having a "foreknowledge machine." You may find my article interesting.

Best of luck!

Warmly,

Aaron

Dear Jens

I like your essay, it is well written, organized and easy to read. Your ideas are clear and fluent. The idea is original and appears to be a good idea for a united world. However, I see some inconveniences that may not help to achieve the goal you pursue.

First thing. Not all knowledge should be made public. For obvious reasons.

The second is that knowledge has different levels and it won't be interesting for an advanced reader, to read introductory knowledge. And similarly, beginners will not understand advanced knowledge.

So, knowledge must be divided according to needs and levels.

Wikipedia is introductory and intermediate level. Schoolarpedia is for advanced readers.

The other problem is how to store all this knowledge. We now have the fortune of storing massive knowledge in magnetic form, but as far as I know, magnetic information cannot be stored for centuries. Magnetism is naturally lost after about 8 o 10 decades. Knowledge engraved in a stone last much longer than any other mother method.

In your essay, you mention that: The repository must therefore not only be robust against man-made or natural disasters, it must also provide the means for accessing and copying digital data without computers, data connections, or even electricity.

Do you have an specific idea on how to store massive knowledge other than magnetic tapes?

Thanks in advance. I'd like to take the opportunity to invite you to read essay and comment on my thread. There I discuss what should be the ideal that should steer the future and discuss our major problems.

Best Regards

Israel

Dear Jens,

your essay is really pointing out the importance of the time-life line we are aware of as our reality. If there were no other "pasts" avaialble you were right, however in my perception it is not only the future that can be "steered" but also the "past", because I observe thapast as just one of the infinite number of "available" pasts.

Maybe you can spend some time to read my essay : "STEERING THE FUTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS", and perhaps you will be able to leave a comment on my thread. I also would be obliged if you gave it a rating that is in accordance with your appreciation.

best regards

Wilhelmus

Preston, Alex,

Thank you for your interesting comments! I am aware of several proposals for ultra-long term storage, including DNA and other media that have been pointed out in other comments. While these may eventually become part of the "onion layer" structure that I propose, they might not play an essential role in the beginning of the project since they still require a lot of basic research to become useful on a massive scale. On the other hand, I believe that we can install a working system to protect and reconstruct digital information for several years after a major disaster even with existing technologies. Most of the development needed at first is software for producing the proposed "knowledge maps". Of course, research on ultra-longevity storage devices can be pursued in parallel, but we do not have to wait until they are ready for market. This is why I did not discuss them in my essay. Thanks nevertheless for the links, they are certainly relevant to the topic!

Jens

Israel,

Good points! Let me try to address them one by one.

Certainly not all knowledge should be made public (for reasons that we probably agree upon), but I believe that some "core knowledge" (science, history etc.) and cultural data (art, music etc.) must be accessible by every human being. Not everybody will agree, but this is what I think we must work toward.

Your second point pretty much reflects what I meant to capture with "multi-dimensional, multi-resolution maps". Just storing data will not be sufficient, we must also provide useful pathways for reaching any given point in knowledge space from different starting conditions (i.e., background knowledge). You are absolutely right.

Magnetic tapes could still be used in the inner layers of the "onion skin" structure where the infrastructure (including power supply) is heavily protected, at least for several years. As I already mentioned in another reply above, I think that ultra-long term storage for centuries and beyond, while interesting and important in the long run, is not a primary problem and shouldn't keep us from setting up the repository as soon as possible.

Thanks, and good luck!

Jens

Dear Jens,

Having a robust backup of the internet is a good idea, and you explained it so clearly that few people can criticize it.

Have you heard of Open-sourced blueprints for civilization ? They are working on a Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) -- a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

My own essay describes Three Crucial Technologies that would make both your repository and the GVCS easier to achieve--and much more robust (Your critical comments and score are welcome, BTW).

Another specific technology that makes your proposal easier to implement (in the near term) is the software package Git. It makes copies of the repository *everywhere* with no centralized control. All you need to do is back up your local data in optical (or some other non-EMP-sensitive) format. Printing everything would also be a good idea, but that's a lot of trees... Maybe using a 3D printer with plastic provided by milk jugs (see Distributed Recycling of Waste Polymer into RepRap Feedstock).

Now for the criticisms (sorry). Backing up data is not fun. Choosing what to back up is not fun either. Vitally important if something goes wrong, of course, but that doesn't change the facts that 1) it's boring, and 2) much of it is already being done. So if it's boring, how are you going to fund it? Besides, if we get hit with something that will wipe out the Internet, then we've got really big problems--a billion people will die before a working repository would have any effect.

If everyone just doubled the FEMA/Red Cross recommendations for emergency preparedness, we could save millions of lives in such a disaster, because the *real* repository of knowledge is people. People are the resource that will rebuild civilization.

-Tee

Your essay doesn't address steering the future of humanity.

However !!!!!!!!!

You cite an important part for the sustainability of humanity. I would like to include your insights in a broader development outside of these essays.

Staged Peer Review with Business Incubator

The collective efforts of many of the essays provide a means to steer the future, but no one essay I have read can steer the future on their own merit. As with all control systems, a collection of perspectives are necessary to implement intelligent control.

If you have elected evidence-based qualified doctors of philosophy (ethics) and science (technology development) develop technologies and manage the use of the data collected by the NSA, then an ethical global repository that includes all sensitive data "encrypted by-parts" provides the means to ethically store a complete archive of human knowledge.

retweet: Part of Civil Rights is that Representation is free of Treason http://tinyurl.com/lpqsur5

Currently the NSA is in great turmoil as corporations are applying pressure to provide corporation managed ethical oversight; to me this translates to providing an entrenched system of corruption and treason.

However, if an elected Representation manages the NSA then corruption and treason of all our Representatives can be exposed. To manipulate stuffing of ballot boxes is Treason.

Collection of ALL information is not currently feasible, diverse types of information are in continuous creation. The bandwidth alone would be a significant challenge as researchers world-wide are collecting raw data and processing diverse relationships and related results.

With the advent of quantum physics, infinite memory is feasible in the foreseeable future. But not likely implemented within our lifetimes unless a breakthrough occurs related to "Non-relativistic Quantum Entanglement"; i.e. the mathematics example of imaginary numbers in physical causality.

So what your essay proposed is feasible, but is part of a larger system needed to steer the future of humanity.

Dear Jens

I must agree with some of the comments above that you don't address the important issue of the subject, how and in what direction to advance from our current position. I even find it slightly disturbing that a topic with such potential should be led by such an inward looking proposition.

I haven't seen you try to defend that suggestion. I've suggested far better use of our brains is possible and required to better understand our place in the universe and how it works, and improve our state. Your essay is nicely written but luckily doesn't need a high score from me on content.

Judy

Dear Dr. Niemeyer,

You have an excellent essay. My compliments. Your proposal should definitely be one of the key aspects of a multi-faceted steering strategy.

Best regards,

Tejinder

Hi Jens,

Thanks for the interesting essay. I found that it resonated with my essay on computationally intelligent personal dialogic agents.

I'd appreciate a rating, if you can do that, since I am a bit short on ratings.

It is interesting that there seems to be a focus on declarative ("the grass is green") rather than procedural ("here are the steps to building a birdhouse") knowledge.

I have used the prototype of the system discussed in my essay to deliver procedural knowledge in the moment of action to groups of students working on a project. Some of the concerns you raised in your essay are important to the further development of a dialogic system.

Thanks,

Ray

Dear Jens!

I keep, your crucial proposal written in your essay to think over seriously! Your essay well thought out, so it deserves high score truly.

However, as my essay points out to that - there may be already simulations in running which are not based on technologies we are trying to reconstruct and probably overcome by our contemporary computer technologies.

Those links which I will provide you for your further open minded consideration are not in the circles of mainstream science and knowledge, but I think them important to know you in regard of written in your essay's introduction, and some warning written in my essay concerning "...unless precautions against this digital amnesia are taken".

Noosphere Crystal Module

Keylontic Dictionary 1

Keylonta - Keylontic Science

Wavegenetic (push the home button to completely download the page)

I should like also to draw to your kind attention: Truly "...The human brain is the (my addition: only) most powerful known realization of a flexible (my addition: short time) storage and retrieval mechanism for multi-dimensional and multi-resolution facts and correlations. Creating and updating maps from a continuous data (my addition: held in structured lights bodies which are factually wave-fields.. and of those translation) is similar to committing memories to long-term memory (my addition: being coded into the bodily genetic from short time memory )in the human brain..." (my addition: And, its recalling and back translating requires a proper full bodily genetic arrangement )

We are presently just in a 'bootstrap mode' nearly from zero to call back our lost knowledge about our natural origin. And I hope truly, there is big need for specially dedicated research initiatives and promoters (having proper genetics in their body and mind-set) who can keep it independent from corporate and political and supremacy purposes and only act for the interest of the humanity survival at first step.

Keep in touch Jens if you feel so, my email given in my essay.

Sincerely

Valeria

Hello Jens,

Very interesting ideas here, though with your last comment, I am of a mind that you cant just separate the "How" and "Where" of steering our future if we want both knowledge and species survival. My essay addresses the survival, but in other papers I have worked, I have addressed the backing up of both knowledge and biodiversity samples (e.g., 4 or 5 seed banks around the world) on Mars. Both of which would be readily available to be interfaced with an active Earth or reintroduced to a seriously damaged Earth.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Donald Barker