Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:00:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tamar Lindsay <dicconf at yahoo.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: old time technology - second try to remove glitch
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

--- On Mon, 8/23/10, Keith F. Lynch <kfl at KeithLynch.net> wrote:

> I wonder how durable flash drives are.  If they will
> last, I think they're nearly ideal backup media,
> being inexpensive, compact, fast,
> and tolerant of being dropped on concrete.

I think the major problem is not the durability of
the object but the readability.  Anything kept
in a technological form will have to be translated
into whatever new technology comes along or be lost.
That includes sound recordings; somewhere I have
a cassette tape of music that was taped onto a
reel-to-reel recorder from some old Edison cylinders.
If I had the tech knowledge I'd dig it out, try to
find a working cassette deck, and copy it onto a
CD, just for the heck of it.  (The songs aren't
that great.)

> ObSF:  In Greg Egan's _Disaspora_, there is discussion
> of getting information to survive an upcoming nearby
> gamma ray burster by carving all of it into stone
> tablets.  When it's realized that this would
> require that several large planets be disassembled
> and converted into stone tablets, they make alternate,
> much more radical, plans.

Surely clay tablets would survive just as well and
be faster to engrave.

=Tamar