The creation of a modern day Rosetta stone.

Scythe

Required reading:

<a href="http://kk.org/kk/2008/08/very-longterm-backup.php" target="_blank">http://kk.org/kk/2008/08/very-longterm-backup.php</a>

<a href="http://www.rosettaproject.org/about-us/disk/concept" target="_blank">http://www.rosettaproject.org/about-us/disk/concept</a>

Now... I approve of this venture in general. The creation of something that will last forever and be around long after we are wiped out that will hopefully be discovered later on is a pretty cool thing. I especially like the intuitive and cross-cultural way of hinting at microscopic detail, by spiraling the text down smaller and smaller.

My only gripe is the materiel they included. The Bible? Genesis of all things? Perhaps it's just my anti-religious sentiment showing through, but wouldn't it've been better to include some of science's best and most important discoveries? Something to show off how clever we were? E=MC^2 comes to mind, as do the calculation of the uniform background big-bang heat, the trajectories of our deep-space probes, the periodic table of elements... countless other examples. Showing people two thousand years in the future that we were a bunch of technologically advanced zealots is probably giving the wrong impression.

I realise that the purpose of the Rosetta Disc is to provide a key to translation of our various languages for the benefit of future archeologists, but why the bible? Why not another work of fiction that uses more commonly accepted sentence structure and word meaning?

--Scythe--

lolfighter

<!--quoteo(post=1686657:date=Aug 26 2008, 11:02 AM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Scythe @ Aug 26 2008, 11:02 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1686657"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[...]Showing people two thousand years in the future that we were a bunch of technologically advanced zealots is probably giving the wrong impression.[...]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Is it really?

eediot

e: deleted

lolfighter

In his novel "The Songs of Distant Earth" (a beautiful book which I heartily recommend), Sir Arthur Charles Clarke writes about the human colony on the mostly oceanic planet of Thalassa, and about their visitors, the last surviving humans from Earth. Being fond of hard science, Clarke tended to not skip lightly around the problem of interstellar travel. So in this case, Thalassa (like other planets) was "seeded" by a robot probe carrying advanced medical equipment and databanks full of genetic information to recreate the human race with. Of course, much other information was required to "jumpstart" Thalassan civilization and let them skip straight to the modern age, but data storage was still limited, so selections had to be made.

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[...]A thousand years ago, men of genius and goodwill had rewritten history and gone through the libraries of Earth deciding what should be saved and what should be abandoned to the flames. The criterion of choice was simple though often very hard to apply. Only if it would contribute to survival and social stability on the new worlds would any work of literature, any record of the past, be loaded into the memory of the seedship.
The task was, of course, impossible as well as heartbreaking. With tears in their eyes, the selection panels had thrown away the Veda, the Bible, the Tripitaka, the Qur'an, and all the immense body of literature - fiction and nonfiction - that was based upon them. Despite all the wealth of beauty and wisdom these works contained, they could not be allowed to reinfect virgin planets with the ancient poisons of religious hatred, belief in the supernatural, and the pious gibberish with which countless billions of men and women had once comforted themselves at the cost of addling their minds.[...]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

In essence, the creators of that disk are in a similar position: They leave information for a future world that has forgotten them. They've made their choice, a different choice than Clarke's fictive men of genius and goodwill made. Incidentally, Clarke has them covered as well:

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[...]"How I would love to know what happened to the seedships that were sent out by those religious groups in the twenty-sixth century! The Mormon's <i>Ark of the Covenant</i>, the <i>Sword of the Prophet</i> - there were half a dozen of them. I wonder if any of them succeeded, and if so what part religion played in their success or their failure."[...]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

In this case, this is what this disk is. A religious artifact left behind to preserve Abrahamic religion if it should die out. We can create other, better disks if we can find the time, drive and funding for it. Or we can try to convince the creators of this one to change the design if any copies are made. Or (and this is what we ARE going to do) we can discuss whether this was a good idea or not.

(There, Scythe. Do I still "fail at discussion?")

moultano

<!--quoteo(post=1686731:date=Aug 27 2008, 05:53 AM:name=emperor_awesome)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(emperor_awesome @ Aug 27 2008, 05:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1686731"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Religion is an inextricable part of our society whether we like it or not, and we can't separate our culture from what we are as a people and as a species.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I disagree with the "inextricable" characterization, though my disagreement depends on how you mean it. Right now, you can't understand our society without understanding religion, so in that sense it is inextricable. However, I think it's possible that at some point religion will have ceased to have an appreciable effect on our society outside of anachronistic but enjoyable customs and holidays, so in that sense it may be extricable.

Rob

The article says that Genesis was chosen because it was translated into nearly every language already, not because it was Genesis. I think the point of this new Rosetta disc is to provide a way of going from one language to the other, and there by making the consumption of other old texts or technologies easier. Just as the real Rosetta Stone just said the same thing multiple times (indeed, it said something utterly worthless), this just says the same thing 1,500 times.

And beyond the fact that Genesis is already translated for them, it's long enough to provide a good comparison between the languages (longer than "The quick brown fox... etc), and it's fairly straight to the point. There's not a lot of imaginative suggestion or colorful use of language, because, hell, it wasn't written in English, so it'll be easy to match up key ideas without getting lost in semantics.

I think as a tool to bridge the gap between languages, this little disc is just perfect. Even if they don't make any other versions of these things or work on other ways to store more texts based on this first disc, it will still be invaluable to anyone in the future as long as one of the languages of the 1500 on there isn't dead. There will always be relics of all kinds of cultures for the future to study, and this can be their best tool to do it with.

eediot

e: deleted

locallyunscene

<!--quoteo(post=1686950:date=Aug 30 2008, 06:24 AM:name=Rob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rob @ Aug 30 2008, 06:24 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1686950"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think as a tool to bridge the gap between languages, this little disc is just perfect. Even if they don't make any other versions of these things or work on other ways to store more texts based on this first disc, it will still be invaluable to anyone in the future as long as one of the languages of the 1500 on there isn't dead. There will always be relics of all kinds of cultures for the future to study, and this can be their best tool to do it with.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Indeed, Maybe there are better things than genesis, but the disc itself is not supposed to be our only legacy, just a means of interpreting the other various works left.