Two Hundred Years From Now

elaine: 18th Apr 2005 - 13:08 GMT

apparrently them little USB keys are as robust as black boxes on aeroplanes, even if you hit them with hammers data can still be got off them same as a proper HD so even if one was in a housefire or anything. bit more sturdy than a floppy or a cd. mind you its all still binary and gets caught in the loopy thinking sometimes, so instead of where are my keys, the door went, i was in the kitchen, the kettle had just boiled, any binary code can always get stuck at any of the junctures and just think the door the door the door the door the door....

Peter: 18th Apr 2005 - 14:14 GMT

wow, jamie... thats some food for thought. im imaginging future archaeologists will wield the ability to write drivers/software to access "ancient data" much like today's archaeologists wield trowels, brushes and shovels to access ancient artifacts. im also imaginging the endless storage devices- like giant android-like arrays of raid drives- that will archive the past's data, just liketoday's museums and research institutes house mummies and pot-sherds. based on the rate of acceleration inherent in today's world, imagine the swell of technology that will bring such massive innovations to life... and imagine all the uncertainty we have about future technologies. im curious about the leaps technology will make to fuel itself, harvest information, and apply said information. its a fascinating daydream.

i see this entry as being a very thoughtful one for citynoise... im really interested to see what thoughts people might come up with here, in respect to your prediction.

watching the future unfold is such an adventure!

Marc: 18th Apr 2005 - 18:39 GMT

Media obsolesence is a huge problem actually- i know everything's sorted on the net now, but imagine the reel to reel tapes and 8 inch floppy disks and even the 5.25 and the 3.25?! from different formats-- CDs start to decay around the 8-10 year mark.. librarians think about this a lot. i don't think the internet is as indestructable as people make out- it's certainly a hierarachical structure, if you nuke the bay area or even champaign, illinois, we won't route around anything to meet back here after the apocalypse.. the net will be gone, and our local nets in our own cities will be the nets- local sphere of influence, like in jonathan lethem's amnesia moon. or if google went away, how would we find one another? if a web page isnt in google, it doesnt exist- google, aol, and other huge corporations are still the gateways to "our" information, just as they were in radio and television-- solution? peer to peer distributed networks over cellphones. the computer is dead long live the computer. in many countries people dont even associate email with computer, just their cellphone (japan, etc). and in some countries people dont even have phones, much less cells.. so if we want a catalogue of civilizized thought as reflected by people who can purchase a computer or set up a website, primarily in the North of the world, by all means we should hurry to mummify the blogosphere daily and bury it in a vault along with the thousands of copies of dianetics that the church of scientology buys to ensure they last beyond what is coming.

Peter: 18th Apr 2005 - 18:52 GMT

...but what happens when the cell towers go down?

Marc: 18th Apr 2005 - 18:57 GMT

heh well some of us have our own cell towers, 'fanx'.

elaine: 18th Apr 2005 - 19:15 GMT

Less than funnily enough, just post 9/11 I was teaching just next to Canary Wharf in Docklands which was thought to be the natural UK target, and I was extremely concerned about my students who were properly scared, 17 year old, ironically mainly Muslim babies. I doubted our fire drill would cover eventualities and wondered if there was any point in a 'duck and cover' policy, and I imagined that our cellphones would be of better use than shouting the register, then I thought, fuck it what is the point of any of that, they're all better off fending for themselves. Canary wharf was not bombed but the fear campaign the Govt waged on it's people is still working it's way through, though we still havn't got ID cards yet despite their best attempts. Fuck em.

jeeff: 18th Apr 2005 - 23:04 GMT

i have a hell of a time opening up the old ansi files i made when i was 16 and really into BBSing. technology marches along and a lot gets left in the dust.