I found this link the other day, and once you get past the bad ‘80s (direct to video) science fiction movie aspects of the idea…it starts to resonate. Imagine creating a library designed to help our descendants to recreate any number of important technologies…
· Which technologies would be best to present, and to how much depth?
· How would you present this information?
· How would you ensure that this library/store of knowledge remains intact and lasts long enough to be of some real value?
· Where would you put this ‘library’?
As the following linked article suggests, there are seed stores on the Norwegian island (Svalbard…way…way up north) whose raison d’être is to be a sort of worst case backstop for any sort of Armageddon…
I’ve heard of similar stores of cultural information, designed to last at least 10,000 years, filled with troves of the fruits of our culture (Arts, Literature, History, etc.).
The idea of a technology ‘library’ fills a related role…
The Library of Utility
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/04/the_library_of.php
I imagine a library atop a remote mountain that collects the essential information needed to re-learn practical knowledge essential to civilization. This depot, open to anyone who journeys there, is the cultural equivalent of the Svalbard seed bank, a vault on the Arctic Circle that holds frozen seeds of crop plants from around the world. The utilitarian documents in this vault would be the seeds of culture, able to sprout again if needed. It would be the Library of Utility, and it would serve as civilization’s backup.
Most great libraries of today have a broad mandate to be very inclusive. They contain "everything." This everything is being duplicated in digital form by Google and others as the long-desired Universal Library. But the library at the top of the mountain would be different. It would be a very selective library. It would not contain the world’s great literature, or varied accounts of history, or deep knowledge of ethnic wonders, or speculations about the future. It has no records of past news, no children’s books, no tomes on philosophy. It contains only seeds…seeds of utilitarian know-how, how to recreate the infrastructure and technology of civilization so far. The library would gather the knowledge needed to recreate itself — all the mechanical structures of brick, mortar, and glass — the library itself. One could think of it as a manual for making a physical library with books and paper, or a manual for reconstruction the infrastructure of civilization. A civilization reboot manual, which has also been discussed at the Long Now Foundation and in various science fiction stories. From the seeds of know-how archived here you could regrow the arts of printing, or metalworking, or plastics, or plywood, or laser discs.
For what it’s worth, this idea has some real value for me, beyond actually creating the site, but in trying to think through what would be important enough to save. What do you think would need to be saved?
