Data preservation

This strange device, about 2 inches long and found abandoned in somebody's desktop drawer, is theorized to be a long-term data storage mechanism from the remote past. Or it may not be. If you can figure out what the hell it is supposed to do, please let us know ASAP.

Data preservation is the science and practice of ensuring that the previous three or four years worth of the world's historical and cultural records (arguably the most important and critical timespan in all of human history) are accurately and reliably transmitted to our remote posterity as much as 5 to 10 years down the long dusty road leading to the distant and nebulous future. This involves the very latest in technological data storage advances which have successfully rendered every single previous attempt along the same lines utterly inadequate to the task, what with the colossal amount of data that is continually being generated in these latter days.

The anticipated demise of Moore's Law changes everything

Moore's Law is anticipated to go belly-up within the next year or so. Needless to say, this will change everything. In response to this dreadful and unavoidable eventuality, today's narrow focus has been on putting brand new storage devices out onto the market with more (or less) storage capacity than ever before and sleeker and snazzier shapes and colors than ever before. Since last year's data storage devices and screen resolutions are as archaic as dinosaurs compared to today's ultramodern offerings, and almost as incompatible, the many photos of your beloved pet cats and beloved close relatives you have painstakingly accumulated since the last data storage revolution of six months ago are now guaranteed to fit comfortably on your brand-new desktop, or even on top of your brand-new desk. And they are all guaranteed to be faithfully preserved right up to the very next data storage revolution, or the very next trendy hairstyle, whichever comes first.

Premature hardware failure sucks

Even so, there remains the largely unforeseen risk that all known digitized versions of ancient photographs and newspaper clippings will be forever lost because somebody, somewhere, forgot to back up a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of the original copy. And then a dust-clogged piece of hardware fails, a disastrous event which nobody dreams could ever happen to them WTF! It is to this special and annoying concern that a handful of strange gnomish cellar dwellers called "archivists" have devoted their lives to mitigate, but only if there's still time. Just like literal pack rats and figurative pack rats, archivists try their darnedest to hang on to all the other stuff that nobody else really wants. Nobody knows why.

Preserving what's left of the remote past purely for its own sake

There are many alternative ways of pickling preserving what's left of the remote past, purely for its own sake. Some of the following obscure methods may even have been utilized before the re-invention of the wheel last week.

Failed data preservation methods

A number of data preservation methods have failed, and failed badly.

Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. And what's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong with that, buster: filling the world with silly love songs wastes our limited memory capacity and landfill capacity, both of which should be rightly reserved for more important and critically needed data such as... uhhh... errr... (hmmm...) Well, anyway, ancient vinyl disks and ancient CD disks are no longer viable methods for storing your stupid collection of insipid musical drivel for future generations. As if they or anybody else wanted them. Besides, the encryption and decryption of encoded messages inside so-called popular songs is prohibitively expensive these days.

Some people want to fill the world with digits of pi. And why the hell not? It has been suggested by some mathematicians that the digits of pi encode everything that has ever been (or ever will be) written in the first place. Problem solved!!! Or has it??? The only potential problems with this otherwise brilliant idea is that (1) data extraction is bound to be far too slow to keep up with demand, and (2) the digits of pi probably encode everything else, including malicious lies. Just like Uncyclopedia. Separating truth from lies is prohibitively expensive in these dank dark days, and Uncyclopedia administrators don't get paid for that sort of thing anyway.

Dawn of a new Stone Age

Any successful attempt at data preservation depends very highly on the long-term durability of the chosen substrate. One such substrate, for example, is a silicon-based material commonly known as stone. Naturally-occurring stone is theorized to have sufficient durability for immediate utilization as an ideal write-only memory (WOM). Some archivists have made grandiose plans to preserve all remaining historical records on carved stone tablets and launch them into deep space before anybody else can get their grubby little fingerprints all over them. That's assuming, of course, that modern rocket technology doesn't go the way of Apollo rocket technology (which would be pretty bad for future ISS-tronauts).

Organic data retention

Another possibility would be passing along our oral stories to our kids in the desperate hope that they will actually listen to us for a change and pass them along to their kids. That's assuming, of course, that they foolishly decide, against all odds, to have kids of their own.

There are many notable historic examples of reliable oral transmission in what's left of history. One notable historic example is the Old-English poem Marye Hath æ Steamboat, which tells the tale of a young girl, born sometime during the Middle Ages, who owned a boiler-driven naval vessel and had a remarkable talent for couching off-color phrases within seemingly-innocent song lyrics. Even after centuries of telling and retelling in elementary schoolyards all around the world, the archaic poem remains surprisingly intact.

Posting stuff on the internet

Posting stuff on the internet probably works too, but we'll have to wait and see what happens. As of now, there are two (2) and only two (2) viable ad-free options left on the entire internet: Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia.

Posting stuff on Wikipedia is fraught with many dangers, pitfalls, and other potential shortcomings. It has often been compared to tossing live animals into the La Brea Tar Pits only to watch them helplessly drown in a sea of boiling liquid asphalt. However, the analogy utterly fails in the very end because, unlike tarpits, Wikipedia's draconian deletion policies leave no fossilized traces behind. Ever. Posting stuff on Uncyclopedia has been noted by many archivists as a somewhat better alternative than utilizing Wikipedia for long-term data preservation, since useless unfunny crap is rarely deleted these days what with Uncyclopedia's administrators having been on strike now for an indeterminant amount of time over the recurrent issue of their dismally-low wages (namely, $0.00 per week). Low self-esteem and attention-deficit something also contributes to administrative apathy, which in turn helps to maintain and preserve Uncyclopedia's exponentially-expanding database.

Nuclear explosions as a last resort

The large scale use of nuclear explosions may pave the only viable way that we, as a species, will be successfully remembered by future and more deserving species. Even though gigantic radioactive blast craters have shockingly low information density (a mere handful of bits per square kilometer), humanity's final message would be clear, unmistakable, long-lasting, and pretty damn hard to undo.

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