How future-proof are our records?
I am looking at my recording devices, hard drives, flash drives, photo libraries, cloud stuff, etc., and they seem so fragile. Unless I have descendants that need to review it, for whatever reason, they can. However, the fragility is very high and requires a lot of motivation to upkeep it. Who gives a damn about my things? Are they useful?
If I take a broader look, I immediately think this is serious and should have a better solution. Where will our legacy be in the future? Do we need to leave a legacy for the year 5000?
By comparison, the huge empires from the past, romans, greeks, egyptians, chinese, to name a few, left a much more powerful and robust legacy. They’re made of hard materials like stone, metal, glass, and whatnot!
Will we have something to offer to the future? Is it important to offer something to the future?
In my view, whatever was left from those empires is very useful. Whether good or bad examples, morally, they are engravings that can help us be better. It’s therapy for our species, spanned through thousands of years of human activity. We learn from the past to build a better future. We reflect today to act better today, be inspired.
But my main concern here is, are we leaving enough for the future to evolve? Or are the things that will endure, like, let’s say a carcass of a car endures hundreds, thousands of years. Will that be more important than what’s in a person’s hard drive? Maybe an excellent philosopher’s notes that dies and no one notices their work?
I’m worried that a lot of knowledge is left behind because no one thinks about it.