On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Platonides <platoni...@gmail.com> wrote: > In that futuristic approach I find it more likely that there will be no > paper / printer, but instead everthing will be stored into > computers/PDAs and transfered between them. So in the event of the > catastrophe you'd be only able to access it with the surviving devices.
In such a futuristic world, I would expect that the major sources of power would be things like solar and geothermal that don't require long-distance supply chains. Then even if the world falls into anarchy, some well-stocked parts will still have power for a good long while. So you wouldn't need to actually print it out, you'd have computers running continuously in some places. Even if 95% of humanity was wiped out, you'd still have a few hundred million people. Not one of them is going to be in a position to save some computers? Even militaries, which are prepared for all sorts of disasters -- some of which will have computers in multiple geographically distributed bunkers deep underground with enough fuel on-site to keep them running for days to years? > You have a copy of wikipedia on your hard disk. You can access it. > But your computer lifetime is finite. And you also don't know for how > much time you'll still have electric current. > What do you do? Screw Wikipedia. If I want to preserve useful knowledge, I'll make sure to safeguard my textbooks. In terms of utility for rebuilding society, the value of Wikipedia is zero compared to even a tiny university library. And there are many thousands of university libraries already conveniently scattered around the world, not a few of them in subbasements where they'll be resistant to nasty things happening on the surface. On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Tim Starling <tstarl...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of doing it (or having done it) > makes people feel good, due to the collective sci-fi-like fantasy > implicitly promulgated by the project itself -- a future world of > poverty and decay, saved by the serendipitous discovery of a > time-capsule sent from the past. It's a spectacle, a stunt, and it has > PR value. > > I certainly don't begrudge the Long Now Foundation for having done > this with the Rosetta Project, since their primary goal is to > encourage long-term thinking, and expensive stunts are obviously a key > part of that. > > But Wikimedia's goals are somewhat different, and we could probably > find some stunts which are more relevant to our mission. Okay, I can agree with that. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l