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Nornagest comments on Open Thread, December 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: ChrisHallquist 03 December 2013 05:10AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 09 December 2013 10:28:38PM *  2 points [-]

Our information storage media has a surprisingly short shelf life. Optical disks of most types degrade within decades; magnetic media is more variable but even more fragile on average (see here and the linked pages). There are such things as archival disks, and a few really hardcore projects like HD-Rosetta, but they're rare. And then there's encryption and protocol confusion to take into account.

A couple centuries after a civilization-ending event, I'd estimate that most of the accessible information left would be on paper, and not a lot of that.