Books or Bytes: The problem of information storage

In a previous article, I addressed some of the wonders and limitations of human memory.

Conclusions: It’s far from perfect, and it’s nothing like the idea of a video or audio recording that we can play over and over, recalling past occurrences as they really happened.

In fact, it is highly malleable and, in most cases, any particular memory changes, at least, a little every time we recall it.

This brings up (to me, at least) the problems of recording information for later use. People have been doing this for about as long as there have been people. Various stone inscriptions date back thousands, even tens of thousands, of years.

The amazing cave paintings at Lascaux, France, appear to record some information about animals and possibly even star positions; exactly what they really represent is unknown to us, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that this could have been a hunting guide or calendar of sorts.

Cuneiform inscriptions from the Sumerians and similar cultures recorded transactions, laws, schoolwork, and stories of mythology. Similar information is gleaned from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and bas-relief carvings in temples the world over.

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Papyrus and then paper records replaced stone carvings or paintings in later civilizations; sounds were recorded on wax cylinders and then on revolving discs made from petroleum (kids, these were called “records” and were how we once listened to music). Photographic recordings started on glass plates and ended up on cellulose acetate film.

Everything since papyrus is now being replaced in turn by digital recordings — these days, less and less commonly on CDs and DVDs and increasingly on home and business computers and in massive computer servers provided so-called cloud storage.

And, of course, the carvings and hieroglyphs are being preserved digitally in the form of digital photos.

We record things — write them down, make videos, etc. — usually so that we won’t forget them or confuse details. But recordings of all kinds are fraught with problems.

Shortcomings

One shortcoming lies in the transitory nature of any medium that we might use. When we write something down on paper, the information is easily lost because the paper is fragile, typically lasting on the order of years to centuries.

You may think that keeping something around for centuries is good enough, but in the case of a civilization, that might not be long at all, because some important things (like thousand-year floods) don’t happen very often but we need to know about them.

Even the ink that we use will degrade and fade, so a lasting record may be difficult to assure. Let’s consider some common options for information storage:

1. Oral traditions: Good for general themes but details can get changed or lost over time. Nobody’s memory is flawless.

2. Stone: Inscriptions can last a long time, but they are subject to weathering and breakage. Ditto clay tablets. And, they’re expensive to make lots of labor (and stone).

3. Paper — writing and printing— suffers from the problems noted above. Also, there are copying errors--whoever is writing or typing is bound to omit and misspell words, because mistakes happen.

4. Audio tape: Not used as much now (do you remember eight-tracks and cassettes?), but the tape itself degrades and the recordings are subject to destruction due to magnetic fields. Ditto video tape.

5. Phonograph records: Largely a collector’s or enthusiast’s item now, records are subject to dirt, superficial damage, and breakage.

6. Film photographs: It’s a good bet that just about anyone under twenty years old has never seen a roll of film or a film camera. The photographs deteriorate in several ways, with color fading first and then the photo paper itself breaking down. The negatives begin to degrade (as do movie film prints) and can become brittle and useless after some years.

7. Finally, digital data: The digital recording of information seemed to many to be the ultimate answer to data storage. Every kind of information can be encoded as ones and zeroes to store and reproduce written information, sound, images — you name it. And it takes up very little space. But this miracle method has some of the same problems as noted above.

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Whether on a CD, DVD, or memory stick, the storage medium--and, therefore, the information itself — is subject to physical damage or electromagnetic corruption.

And just copying the information onto a new disk is not reliable — copy errors are an accepted fact of digital data.

Losing information

One sobering thought is that even if we perfect a data-storage system — paper, magnetic tape, DVD, or digital — that is incorruptible and indestructible, the truth is that it will be useless when the technology to read the information no longer exists.

A stone inscription may be indecipherable because we have no clue about the language. A collection of videotapes is virtually useless today because so few people have videotape players.

Good luck finding someone who has the equipment to read your old floppy discs — and they have been out of use for only a couple of decades; how hard will it be in a thousand years?

Each of the Voyager probes launched in the 1970s to travel out of the solar system included a gold record album with recorded sounds from Earth, including music and language.

Knowing that there will be no turntables (Google that one, kids) in use in whatever alien civilization might happen to find one of the probes, the designers included information on how to play the record, in markings on its surface.

It was the best option, but I am not very confident that (1) anyone will find the record or (2) the instructions will make sense. It would be an interesting test to present such a record to our scientists in 500 years, to see what they make of it.

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What can we do?

So, what is a society to do? Can we assure safe, usable data storage beyond a few decades or centuries? Well, probably not. But one very recent advancement may put us one step closer.

It involves inscribing the information with lasers into a disk of quartz, using a so-called 5D technique. The information density is so great that EVERYTHING that people know — all of human knowledge could be stored in a package about the size of a golf ball.

The quartz, if not damaged (by, say, whacking it with a hammer), will be stable for billions of years — yes, billions.

We could make a few dozen of these things and have a record of all of history, science, literature, philosophy, with copies distributed around the world for safe-keeping. New editions could be produced every few years if needed. There would always be a record of us.

Now, it’s not perfect — there’s always the fear of a hammer. Also, will future generations of humans — or whatever we become — be able to read the record?

Will they have an idea that within these quartz structures lie the accumulated knowledge and aspirations of their predecessors? Of course, we’ll never know — but it is encouraging that we’re trying.

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