I recently went to the Internet Archive in SF, got a tour of their operations etc. Absolutely amazing place, very forward thinking, and they indeed are very serious about prevent something like the destruction of the Library of Alexandria from happening again.
There is a (great, IMHO) science fiction novel, "The Mote In God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle that describes humanity's first contact with another intelligent species.
Due to their biology, this alien species experiences periods of massive population growth that eventually lead to all-out war and collapse of civilization. Over uncounted thousands, maybe millions of years, these aliens have accepted this vicious cycle as kismet, and deal with it by building "warehouses" filled their most advanced technology to jump start civilization after the next, inevitable, collapse.
I hope humanity will never have to deal with such a collapse, but I given our collective tendency towards self-destructive behavior, maybe we should build such an archive as if it was meant for future cavemen to jump-start them into a new Anthropocene. Even if that collapse never happens (I am keeping my fingers crossed!), the resulting tome of knowledge would be a suitable monument to all the incredible things that humanity has accomplished, as well as an insurance policy in case we manage to mess up on a monumental scale.
EDIT: A more positive perspective would be The Library from David Brin's uplift saga, a humongous collection of knowledge acquired by many, many species over millions, if not billions of years.
Comments
I recently went to the Internet Archive in SF, got a tour of their operations etc. Absolutely amazing place, very forward thinking, and they indeed are very serious about prevent something like the destruction of the Library of Alexandria from happening again.
There is a (great, IMHO) science fiction novel, "The Mote In God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle that describes humanity's first contact with another intelligent species.
Due to their biology, this alien species experiences periods of massive population growth that eventually lead to all-out war and collapse of civilization. Over uncounted thousands, maybe millions of years, these aliens have accepted this vicious cycle as kismet, and deal with it by building "warehouses" filled their most advanced technology to jump start civilization after the next, inevitable, collapse.
I hope humanity will never have to deal with such a collapse, but I given our collective tendency towards self-destructive behavior, maybe we should build such an archive as if it was meant for future cavemen to jump-start them into a new Anthropocene. Even if that collapse never happens (I am keeping my fingers crossed!), the resulting tome of knowledge would be a suitable monument to all the incredible things that humanity has accomplished, as well as an insurance policy in case we manage to mess up on a monumental scale.
EDIT: A more positive perspective would be The Library from David Brin's uplift saga, a humongous collection of knowledge acquired by many, many species over millions, if not billions of years.
EDIT: typo